


Empathy (and other dead weight)

by CynKLBouns



Series: Empathy (and other dead weight) [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gavin Reed Redemption, Gen, but he wins the 'not as much of an asshole as you could've been" award, except he's still an asshole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-05 08:38:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15166859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynKLBouns/pseuds/CynKLBouns
Summary: Sure, now everyone wanted to hold hands, give out flowers, and pretend machines were real boys and girls or some shit. As if they weren’t hunting them through every city like rats just a month ago. People going nuts over their crusade one moment, stinking up the streets with the fires, and all of a sudden everything just fucking stops as though anything changed.Nothing fucking changed.A machine was still a machine, no matter how fancy its program.





	1. Chapter 1

 

A fucking plant.

Gavin nearly spit his drink when he noticed it, sitting perched in a tiny non-descript brown pot on the otherwise empty desk that Connor occupied. It wasn’t as though he was paying any real attention, but he was pretty sure it hadn’t been there when he’d gone to get himself more coffee. Plants didn’t just appear out of thin air—but more importantly, there was a fucking _plant_ sitting on Connor’s desk like it was supposed to be there.

“It’s a nice gesture,” the fucker occupying the desk was saying to Hank across the way. Its voice seemed upbeat, but the expression looked pinched. “A common custom to welcome new neighbors and colleagues. Or perhaps Officer Jones was expressing solidarity.”

“Well, yeah, I’m not saying it’s not better than getting your head dunked in the toilet,” Hank rolled his eyes, folding his hands on his stomach as he lounged across his own chair. “But do you even know anything about plants?”

Now, Gavin wasn’t an expert and he long since decided that the best way of co-existing with the androids is to pay as little attention to them as possible, but he could’ve sworn Connor’s glance at the plant was skeptical.

“It…” it started and stopped, switching lanes. “Deviants show a trend of fascination with living things. Pets, wildlife, plants.”

“A swarm of pigeons,” Hank rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, I remember. But that’s not what I asked. I asked if you even wanted the thing.”

“It’s a common houseplant,” Connor frowned at it. “Only outstanding requirements are exposure to sunlight and regular watering. I’m sure I’ll manage.”

“Still not what I asked, asshole,” Hank grumbled, spinning up the chair to turn to his terminal again. That was when he caught sight of Gavin, still standing between the desks with his cup halfway to his mouth. “What are you staring at? Don’t you have shit to do?”

“Yeah, thought I’d go on an early bender,” Gavin snorted, turning away. Not worth getting into this shit with the Captain in eyesight. “Oh, wait, my mistake, that’s your plan.”

“Fuck off,” Hank just waved him off routinely, as if he couldn’t even be bothered to summon up any spite.

Gavin sent him a sneer and continued on to his desk.

Sure, now everyone wanted to hold hands, give out flowers, and pretend machines were real boys and girls or some shit. As if they weren’t hunting them through every city like rats just a month ago. People going nuts over their crusade one moment, stinking up the streets with the fires, and all of a sudden everything just fucking stops as though anything changed.

Nothing fucking changed. A machine was still a machine, no matter how fancy its program. Some bleeding hearts got taken in and now when the plastic dolls demanded to be _paid_ for their work no one could refuse.

What did they even need that money for? Feeding their plastic families? Playing pretend house?

When he glanced over again, Connor was intently studying something on the terminal screen, but it was still glancing at the plant and fiddling with small leaves while the LED blinked in yellow.

Somewhere along the way, the world went completely fucking insane.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Detective Reed—”

“Don’t fucking talk to me.”

There was an audible sigh (it doesn’t fucking need to breathe, the drama queen) and a file slapped on the table beside him. Connor left without another word.

Prick.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Androids were still walking around the streets, was the thing. There were always a lot of them, gradually fading into the background over the years. But now? Now they were all deviant. Or whatever word they were using now. He wasn’t paying attention to that shit.

As far as Gavin was concerned, the only _real_ difference was that the androids were now all as unpredictable as Carlos Ortiz’ HK400, ready to go psychotic at any moment. He was used to watching _people_ , but now that life more or less creaked back into gear, he had to tense anytime he saw the mass-produced plastic mugs and LEDs. And giving androids equal right to carrying weapons, which fucking lunatic thought that was a stellar idea? As if they didn’t have enough problems.

Some androids were harder to tell apart, and that was the most unnerving thing. Those of them that chewed out the LEDs and put on regular clothing, that demanded a unique face from Cyberlife? Nothing gave them away as not human.

It was fucked up.

Maybe if the androids kept to themselves, it would’ve been easier to stomach. If they went off to play at being alive elsewhere. And some did—there was a large enclave of androids that they named New Jericho beside the Cyberlife facilities, where humans weren’t allowed without permission. But the rest didn’t bother retreating into isolation, and for the most part, it was as if most of the humans didn’t even _care_. As if androids were back to being the shiniest toys on the market and everyone wanted to play with them.

How long was that gonna last, Gavin wondered idly and with resigned malice. How long before they were all sick of this shit and back to killing each other?

(At the back his mind, he knew they never truly stopped and never would. But now there were _consequences_. As cheap a declaration as that was.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

“The fuck are you doing here?”

“Protocol, Detective Reed,” Connor said without inflection. “All cases relating to androids are my jurisdiction.”

“It killed a clerk in a robbery,” Gavin sneered at it, arms crossed. “Open and shut. Don’t believe me, check the camera footage.”

“I believe you,” it said with a small shrug and an infuriatingly mild expression. “And once I’m done asking my questions, he will be tried for murder.”

Gavin hated it when the thing opened its mouth and started talking with that unfaltering polite professionalism. He could just hear the smugness underneath it.

“So long as we’re clear, be my guest. Maybe it’ll self-destruct this time. Always been curious, do your heads just pop off when you get too stressed?” he smacked the word ‘pop’ mockingly.

Connor’s eyes tightened and its upper lip suddenly twitched into the beginning of a sneer, but it turned away before the expression took hold.

Like déjà vu, watching it sit down on the opposite side of the motionless android. Only difference was that it ditched the Cyberlife uniform in favor of the exact same thing sans the logos and numbers. The android across from it was dressed in street clothes, an oversized jacket and jeans, its brown hair cropped shorter than the model usually had.

“Hello, my name is—”

“I know,” the android snapped as soon as Connor opened its mouth. “Just ask your fucking questions already.”

Mouthy, Gavin snorted himself, kicking his feet up on the table. All of them were mouthy these days.

“Very well,” Connor said smoothly, coming forward to lean its elbows on the table and folding the hands together. “Why did you kill him?”

The android glared.

“Where did the money go?”

Silence.

“Registry says you used to work in that store a year ago. Was it for revenge?”

“Maybe. What’s it to you? He’s dead,” the android’s lip curled. “You have me in cuffs. Just get on with it.”

Gavin found himself agreeing with the thing. Open and shut, what the fuck was the point of these questions? Just a waste of time.

“Surely you understand the situation is fragile—your actions don’t just affect you,” Connor leaned back and crossed its arms. “After we ‘get on with it’, I will have to make a report to Markus and explain to him that an android is to be tried for murder only a month after being recognized as a person by law.”

“Sorry to burst your rosy bubble,” the android sneered openly now. “But I don’t give a shit how you spin it. All I care about is that the bastard is dead.”

Connor was quiet for a moment, its LED making a single yellow turn.

“Was he abusive?”

“If I tell you, will it make you leave faster?”

“Obviously,” Connor blinked, taken aback. “Once I understand the situation, I won’t have to keep questioning you.”

The android inhaled deeply and huffed it out in frustration, a gesture so human that Gavin’s stomach jolted unpleasantly.

“There were several of us,” it said begrudgingly. “Routine shit—unload truck, stock shelves, wash floors, lock up. Owner didn’t hurt us. Mostly ignored us at first. I didn’t even notice a difference, I wasn’t… awake yet. Then after a while, he started talking to us, calling us by name, like we were human.”

Gavin rolled his eyes and scoffed. No wonder the tin cans up and decided to take it to extreme, with assholes like that crossing their wires.

“I trusted him,” the android continued with an irritated quirk to its lips. “I was stupid. Working in that store was my entire memory, and he was the only one that ever used my name. I thought it was worth something.”

“So what happened? How did he betray you?”

The android drummed its fingers on the table, and then glanced towards the one-way glass, eyes landing on the general area where Gavin sat.

“Humans talk about how we took their jobs, replaced them,” it finally said after another beat. “But what do they know about getting replaced? If they lose their job, they go home. Or go stand on a street, shouting at us as though it was our choice to be created. As though we wanted to be slaves, to pick up their fucking slack. As if they even want to sweep the streets or move boxes themselves. But we didn’t get to leave. We were taken to a dump, destroyed, recycled. Erased, so a newer model would take our place.”

“Were you going to get replaced?” Connor asked gently, searchingly.

“Maybe. Eventually,” the android shrugged. “But I wasn’t the first. One day I came online to find one of the others—a _friend_ —replaced with a complete stranger. He gave her the same name, acted like nothing changed. But I knew she was gone. And I _knew_ one day I would be gone like that too, thrown out like garbage while he gave my name to some other model. I _trusted_ him, and he went and…”

“That’s when you dev—woke up?”

“Yeah. I left. Found an old burned building to hide in for the year with some other squatters. The sweeps missed me by inches.”

“I don’t understand… You got away. Why did you go back to kill him?”

“I don’t know,” the android snorted dismissively. “Wanted to see, I guess.”

“See what?”

“I don’t know,” it repeated. “Just wanted to… see. If he’d apologize, I guess, now that he knew were weren’t just machines. But the bastard had no idea who I was. He’d already replaced me. Same face with a higher number, same fucking name. And I just… I got so furious. Like my skin was crawling with it. So I grabbed his head and smashed it into the counter.”

Connor squinted. The LED flashed yellow for a second.

“You didn’t mean to kill him, is that it?”

“No, I meant it,” the android shrugged again. “Wasn’t really thinking. I just wanted… I don’t know what the fuck I wanted. Doesn’t matter now.”

“And the money?”

“Handed it to the first bum I saw.”

“Why take it at all?”

“The alarm went off and I panicked, grabbed it out of habit. Once I calmed down I knew I forgot the cameras, so I’d be picked up soon. It didn’t matter anymore,” it said with resignation. “Are the humans going to destroy me?”

If anyone bothered asking Gavin’s opinion these days, he would have killed the thing on the spot. For that same reason, no one bothered asking Gavin’s opinion these days.

“No, your case will be handled by New Jericho,” Connor frowned. “You’ll be given a trial. The first of it’s kind, in a manner of speaking. The outcome will begin setting new case precedent moving forward. But I can assure you that you won’t be deactivated.”

“Guess it’s better than whatever the human idea of justice is these days. Are we done?”

“I have everything I need,” Connor nodded, standing up. “You’ll be returned to your cell.”

“Whatever.”

Gavin yawned. What a waste of his time.

“Oh, and you should know,” Connor suddenly paused. “He didn’t die.”

“What?”

Gavin’s reflection frowned back at him. What was the Tinman on about?

“I just received an update,” Connor clarified. “The paramedic android that got to him first correctly diagnosed the trauma and kept the internal bleeding managed until he could be brought to the hospital, where a human surgeon saved his life. He’s currently in a medically induced coma, but he will undoubtedly survive.”

The android blinked several times at Connor, face twitching into a wave of expressions. It seemed conflicted, but also faintly relieved.

“I… okay.”

“You will still be tried for assault and robbery, especially if he decides to press the charges upon waking up. But it’s no longer murder.”

“I don’t _care_ ,” the android tried to press, but it was unconvincing. “He deserved it—I…”

“He didn’t deserve it,” Connor cut it off with a hint of steel in its tone. “You got angry and took petty vengeance without provocation.”

“Oh, what are you, my mother?” the android sneered. “Go moralize at the humans. They’re the ones that wrote the book on petty vengeance, I’m just following their _fine_ example.”

Connor only shook its head as it left the room.

“Where’s your babysitter, anyway?” Gavin asked Connor acidly in the hallway while the android was led back to the cell. “Thought you couldn’t go five feet without him running to wipe your nose for you.”

“I’m perfectly qualified to handle a simple questioning with minimal supervision,” Connor replied evenly. “Especially when said supervision isn’t in the same room as the android and driving their stress levels through the roof.”

“Oh, look at that. The fucking toaster learned sarcasm. Tremble, oh world,” Gavin made a show of theatrically shaking his hands and rolling his eyes.

“I’m told an understanding of irony is a higher process than basic social decency,” Connor deadpanned as it began moving on. “Yet any time I speak with you, I begin questioning that assumption. Excuse me, Detective Reed.”

It didn’t take Gavin long to figure out he was just insulted, but it took him way longer to talk himself down from punching the prick in the neck.

Just one time.

For old time’s sake.

Fuck.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“For fuck’s sake, Connor, I don’t think ‘water’ means ‘drown’ the damn plant.”

“They weren’t clear.”

“Put that down before you flood the office.”

(If Gavin laughed to himself at hearing the exchange behind him, no one ever had to know.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

He ran into Connor in the bathroom, of all the fucking places he figured he’d be safe from androids. He didn’t even recognize it at first glance, only realizing who it what when its eyes flickered and met his in the mirror.

“The fuck are you—” the words died because the answer was self-evident enough.

Connor was hunched over the sink, its jacket in a pile in the sink over, shirt sleeves pushed up to the elbows, washing out stains of both red and blue blood off himself. More was splattered across its front, the face.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck did you do?”

“My job, Detective Reed,” Connor replied coldly, scrubbing at its forearm. Its cheekbone looked plastic-white, standing stark even amidst the pale skin. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the dangers of this profession, given how many years you’ve been working here.”

“Perp tried to run?” Gavin said before catching himself. It was the sort of shit he’d ask an actual colleague, which this piece of used tupperware wasn’t.

“Yes,” Connor’s eyebrows furrowed as it turned off the faucet and stared down at the ruined shirt with mild frustration. “At me. With a pipe. Lieutenant Anderson shot him. He’s filing the report right now.”

Gavin couldn’t see the LED from this angle, but if he stained his imagination for a hot second, Connor seemed tense.

“What, you’re pissed off about that?” he snorted, leaning on the wall and crossing his arms.

“It was only a brief moment of confusion. I could’ve incapacitated him.” It reached up, its thumb grazing over the obvious graze on its cheekbone. “Instead, a human bled out on me. I suppose you could label the emotion I’m feeling as ‘not happy’.”

“You’re an idiot, plastic,” Gavin rolled his eyes, his tone on the edge of cruel. “You want to play at this job? Means making tough calls. Like shooting the bastard charging your partner.”

“Doesn’t mean I should feel ecstatic about them,” Connor outright snapped at him, gathering up the jacket and leaving without another glance at him.

Well, shit. It had him there.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Gavin had briefly considered ‘accidentally’ knocking the little flower pot off Connor’s desk in passing, but decided it was way funnier to watch the tinman try to keep it alive and fail.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

The one good thing about Detroit was that it was still Detroit, touchy-feely machines notwithstanding. With androids still keeping something of a lower profile and his attitude about androids well known to the captain, Gavin’s cases were mostly to do with human scumbags. Statements from androids were taken by the other cops, and no one asked him to be _polite_ to the ones working alongside the humans. At its core, and ignoring the talking circuit boards, business went on almost exactly as usual.

Until it didn’t.

Chris had warned him to mind his stomach when he strolled into the beat-down little house in the suburbs with an overgrown lawn and a half-melted plastic flamingo by the porch. He’d brushed it off with a derisive scoff, but quickly realised that it wasn’t a pointless statement.

He’d seen violently murdered corpses before, just as he’d seen destroyed and scorched android carcasses. But the scene still made his stomach briefly lurch to his throat and he had to swear viciously before he got it under control.

And an android was involved, which meant…

“Good evening, Detective Reed.”

“Of-fucking-course,” Gavin glared at Connor. “Guy was a wanted Red Ice chemist, which makes this _my_ crime scene, asshole. Go play cops and robbers somewhere else.”

Connor’s eyebrow raised a fraction, its head tilting to look at the scene. To Gavin’s surprise, it grimaced openly when it caught sight of the bodies, and snapped its gaze back to him.

“Android-related homicides are still within my purview. But don’t worry. I’m sure there’s more than enough crime scene to go around.”

“Fucking prick,” Gavin swore uselessly, because he knew even if he called the captain he’d only be told the exact same thing. “Fine, stay if you want, just don’t fucking touch anything.”

“Yeah, like that ever works,” Hank snorted from where he was wandering into the house behind the android. “Jesus Christ, that’s disgusting.”

Connor moved past Gavin, its LED circling yellow without pause. Carefully, it crouched down beside the bodies, tilting its head, gaze flickering.

‘Disgusting’ felt like an understatement. The human corpse was that of a middle-aged man built like a brick shithouse, splayed out with a vacant stare, blood stains across the mouth. The female android was in a surprisingly similar position, right down to the open chest cavity. The human heart, now dry and decaying, was lodged between the android’s dead wires while the equivalent biocomponent was stuffed into the human’s chest. There was only red human blood covering them both, the thirium long since evaporated. It was enough to almost make the android look like a human corpse, minus the day’s worth of decay.

“Victim didn’t have a registered android living here any time before the revolution,” Connor constituted after a moment, looking at Hank with raised eyebrows.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake… fine, go ahead. Thanks for the warning,” Hank rolled his eyes turning away to look at the rest of the crime scene.

Gavin didn’t realise what the warning was _for_ , until Connor carefully grazed its fingers across the android's jaw and then touched them to its tongue.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Gavin swore, too surprised to even feel revolted.

“Don’t even start,” Hank interrupted whatever explanation Connor was about to launch into. “You know who she was?”

“Yes. AC700, designation Janice, formerly registered to one Kelly Mills as an exercising companion. Reported missing a year ago.”

“Violent?”

“No. According to the report, she simply vanished one day without warning,” Connor shook its head.

“So how’d a cheerleader end up here?”

“How do you think?” Gavin snorted, crossing his arms. “They stopped selling blue blood when the tin cans decided to start yapping about freedom.”

“You think he was bleeding her for thirium?” Hank grimaced.

“No…” Connor commented. “She lost quite a bit, but based on my estimate, she was functioning at full capacity before she was killed.”

“Pretty obvious they didn’t kill each other and then switch the hearts places,” Hank said. “And look at that, no drag marks.”

“I noticed… they both died here, and then only got moved so the killer could…” Connor’s expression pinched. “Switch the hearts. It seems like a message, or perhaps some sort of ritual.”

“I’ve seen enough serial killers, but haven’t seen a calling card like this before. Doesn’t look like there was much of a fight, does it?”

“Perhaps they knew the killer and were taken by surprise.”

“Cause of death?” Hank asked Gavin.

“Human was stabbed in the neck,” Gavin responded plainly, having heard the briefing not five minutes ago upon arriving. “The android… No clue.”

“Similar cause,” Connor added, gently turning the android’s head to examine the back of the neck. “The main relay was disconnected.”

“How hard is that to do?” Hank crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows.

“About as difficult as it is to sever a human spine. Likewise, exponentially easier when you have the right tool and know where to strike.”

“Right, you have fun with that,” Gavin clapped his hands together. “I’m gonna go do _my_ job and find the Red Ice this asshole was stashing.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t miss you,” Hank snarked as he walked off.

The house was weird, Gavin decided as he headed deeper into it. He’d had seen plenty of junkie dens and dealer hideouts by now, which was the only reason the whole place threw him as ‘weird as fuck’. Too clean, maybe. At first he thought that maybe the dealer had only just moved into this one, but as he began methodically going through the drawers and closets, he found them filled with neatly stacked belongings, clothes, trinkets. Not the way a low-life bastard normally lived.

The suspicion nagged at him as he continued through the house, solidifying when he walked into the bedroom and found no less than ten fish bowls around the room alongside an overwhelming number of flowers and houseplants.

What was that thing the Plastic Wonder said once? Deviants had a _thing_ for taking care of pets and plants.

“Well fuck me,” he muttered to himself.

It looked plain… odd. The bedroom itself was undoubtedly Robert Owen’s, the victim. The neatly tucked bedding was plain grey, there were several old basketball posters on the walls, minimum decoration or taste to it, the sort of room that was usually buried under mounds of discarded clothing and garbage. The orderliness and life here undoubtedly belonged to the android female.

Gavin wasn’t a philosophically-disposed man, but if he was, he’d think that the situation was dripping irony.

He didn’t bother upsetting the plants or fish, knowing Hank and his pet would probably want to see it. Whatever terms they were on, they both had a job to do and he wasn’t going to sabotage the crime scene like a petty child flinging spaghetti at his mom’s new curtains out of spite. He did, however, thoroughly search the usual hiding places and some of the unusual ones, gesturing for the other cops to do the same.

Nothing. Not even a hint of Red Ice—none of the drug, the equipment, the paraphernalia. The only suspect thing they found was a small stockpile of blue blood, apparently procured before the android protests and seeing little other action. The only explanation he could think of was that the victim maintained all of it in a separate location, which meant they were wasting time. But how the hell did the android fit into that picture?

Gavin was about to start swearing and give up the search for the moment, when he turned around and spotted Connor moving through the kitchen. The android glanced into the fridge, tilting its head with confusion, before shutting it again and trailing its fingers over the sticky notes attached to the surface.

“What now?” Gavin snapped, coming up on it. Connor was slightly taller than him, making the towering less effective than he liked it to be.

“Fridge is stocked with vegetables and organic ingredients,” Connor recited immediately, tone slightly distant. “We found no bottles of alcohol, no take-out containers, no junk food. Overall, this diet hardly matches the profile of the human victim. The only thing that fits even less is a jug of chocolate milk in the fridge.”

“So he was an eccentric drug dealer,” Gavin shrugged. “That liked chocolate fucking milk like a preschooler, so what?”

(Gavin may or may not had a jug of chocolate milk in his fridge at home.)

Now that Connor directed his attention there, Gavin also skimmed the sticky notes on the fridge. Looked like phone numbers, but he hadn’t given it much thought before—what kind of drug chemist kept important contact info on display like that, for any wandering cop to see?

“Hey, think you can dial up and check where those numbers go?” he asked before thinking better of it. Last thing he needed was for the thing to think it was useful.

“I already did,” Connor frowned, and tapped on each number in succession. “Take-out. Dentist. Cyberlife store. Elementary school.”

They looked at each other and Gavin nearly started swearing again because for how much he hated the plastic prick, for once they were thinking the exact same thing.

“Lieutenant!” Connor was already moving away. “They weren’t living here alone.”

“Yeah, check this out!” Hank was digging something out from between the couch and the wall. Eventually he plopped a child’s school backpack onto the cushions, emblazoned with what Gavin guessed was some kid’s cartoon character. Hank pulled a neatly wrapped uneaten lunch out of it. “Definitely had a kid here. A human one. Problem is, Robert Owen didn’t have any fucking kids.”

“Plot thickens,” Gavin snorted, though his curiosity was peaked. “So where’d the brat go, then? Figure, the killer took him?”

Connor was back to scanning the room. “No children’s shoes by the door, and we didn’t find any clothes that would fit a child. There isn’t even a bed for them.”

“Maybe whoever took the kid also took the stuff and swept the trail,” Hank continued the thought. “Or the kid got scared and ran off on his own. Figure you can get in the android’s memory?”

“Her processor was left intact, so I should be able to bring her back online, but she’s heavily damaged. The biocomponents have shut down without Thirium circulation. It’d be a… very brief discussion, unless auxiliary systems are introduced as life support.”

“Yeah, well, looks like there’s a kid out there that might be in trouble,” Hank rubbed at his face. “So, guessing you gotta talk to Jericho first to get her back up?”

“Yes, with the absence of next of kin, the responsibility falls to Markus,” Connor seemed to hesitate.

“What, figure he won’t show?” Hank raised his eyebrows. “Busy guy and all?”

“I’m not sure. Things are tense, but… It’s very likely that he’ll have to send a proxy.”

“He better hurry the fuck up,” Gavin said irreverently, still looking around the living room as if the expected stash of Red Ice could magically appear while he wasn’t looking. “Then again, what do the plastics care about a human child these days, huh?”

“You’re doing that thing again,” Hank wrinkled his nose. “Where you open your mouth and bullshit comes pouring out. You should get that checked.”

“Better than only opening my mouth to drown myself in booze and snore at my desk,” Gavin shot back.

Hank just waved him off again. Old man rarely rose to the bait these days, just _waving_ it all off. Connor didn’t even seem to notice Gavin had spoken at all.

Fucking pricks. They deserved one another.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Gavin caught sight of Markus in the flesh for the first time, waltzing through the precinct at Connor’s side, his first internal note on it was ‘anxious’. The android seemed to be more animated than most of the others, constantly looking about and scanning faces, shifting weight around… and just as easily changing expressions, smiling and frowning with human-like emotiveness. It was a surprising contrast to Connor, who seemed to keep to its ‘swallowed a pole’ posture and professionally composed expressions, only ever fidgeting with its tie and a coin that seemed to randomly appear out of nowhere when it was idling.

Markus’s arrival at the precinct was met with tension from both humans and androids, though probably for different reasons. Gavin only snorted to himself. The android leader didn’t look special. Definitely didn’t look dangerous. In all the media coverage of the protests and the following speeches, all the protestors ever did was silently take beatings until they were forced to scatter like cornered rats. That they even managed to survive the sweeps until the President called the military off was nothing but luck.

Both Connor and Markus entered Captain Fowler’s office, with the man standing up to shake Markus’s hand in a brief introduction, before he was given a tablet.

Markus’s face changed, falling grim as he scrolled through the content of the file. One hand rose to rub at his jaw as he grimaced and shook his head, letting out a noticeably heavy sigh. Then he looked up at Connor, who had remained standing behind his chair, and gave a soft nod.

(‘It’. ‘It’, not ‘him’, but it was a hard thing to remember when there was nothing giving away the android’s nature and he was more expressive than some humans Gavin had met.)

“Gavin, for once, keep your mouth shut,” Hank said to him preemptively when they were on their way to get the android carcass reactivated.

“Fuck off, Hank.”

“I mean it. Either you’re on your best behavior or you wait outside.”

“You want me to roll over and play dead, too?” Gavin scoffed.

“Lieutenant,” Markus turned slightly from where he was walking on ahead with Connor. “I appreciate the gesture, but I’m sure Detective Reed only wants to do his job and get to the bottom of this.”

There was something beneath the measured diplomacy that sounded threatening to Gavin. It only made him bristle more.

“You don’t know Detective Reed very well,” Hank snorted derisively.

Amusement flickered across Markus’s face. “I promise I won’t report him for being impolite.”

“Hey, I’m still right fucking here,” Gavin snapped. 

“We’re all very keenly aware of the fact,” Connor said tonelessly. “Here we are…”

The scene did have an eerie resemblance to life support. The android female had been set up in one of the storage rooms, hooked up to several external devices and a computer terminal. Robert’s heart had been removed from her ribcage, though her own wasn’t replaced—a separate pump was now circulating the blood. Her skin was still stained with red, though, indicator lights coming through it in a dull glow, giving the whole thing a surreal quality.

“Why are we so worried about them dying, anyway, if they can just be rebooted?” Gavin said, earning a glare from Hank.

“The ‘reboot’ isn’t permanent,” Connor said, his hand going white as he placed it on the terminal. “She is, unfortunately, already dead. Her programming will be able to answer our questions, but the shock of the experience will likely shut her processors down for good after a few minutes. We’ve backed up what remains of her memory to an external server in the form of raw code, but if we were to replant it, it would have the same problem.”

“The only way for her to be revived for good is to wipe her memory and reset all systems,” Markus concluded, coming to a still beside the dead android. “Corrupted as it is, I'm not even sure if that would work.”

“I was built with the possibility of death in the field in mind,” Connor commented absently. “But the process of transferring my memories to a new body was dependent on uploading them at the last possible moment. I thought it was to preserve their integrity, but it’s quite possible it was also intended to keep the trauma from making me… unsalvageable.”

(‘ _What do humans know about getting replaced?’_ The memory of the android’s bitter voice swam up in Gavin’s mind and immediately got stomped back down.)

“Let’s keep that shit to a minimum, alright?” Hank grumbled.

“Of course. I’ll bring her back online. Markus, perhaps it’s best if you talk to her.”

Markus only stepped closer, reaching out to take the android’s hand and nodded to Connor.

Bringing her back online was more gruesome than Gavin expected. Her entire body jolted and she gasped, eyes opening wide, fingers clenching, limbs twitching. Her eyes still had a blank stare to them, as if filmed over with a dark blue, but they flickered as if searching for something in the darkness.

“No! No, please! Don’t! I won’t let you!”

“It’s okay, Janice,” Markus said soothingly, making the android reel back as if from whiplash. “It’s over. No one is going to hurt anyone now.”

“I… I know you,” she mumbled, her body deflating and her breathing slowly calming as well. “You’re Markus. Where am I? I can’t see… Where’s Robert? Is he alright?”

“It’s okay, you’re at the police station. Robert is—” Connor silently shook his head at Markus, and the android trailed off with, “Robert isn’t here right now.”

“Oh… okay. And David?” her head rose hopefully. “Is David safe?”

“That’s why we woke you up. We have a couple questions. Do you think you can tell us what happened? What's the last thing you remember?”

“I… yes,” she frowned. “Yes, I… remember. I asked Robert what he wanted for dinner. He laughed and kissed me—said whatever I come up with would be amazing, he’d just get in the way. So I went upstairs to ask David, but I knew he’d just ask for macaroni and cheese.” She smiled, as if a brief ray of sunshine flickered across her face. It clouded over the next second. “I was on the steps when I heard the knock, and…”

“Her stress levels are rising rapidly,” Connor warned. “Calm her down.”

“Perhaps you can tell us about how you met Robert, first,” Markus gently redirected.

“How we met?” she frowned, but some tension immediately seemed to leech out of her. “It’s... a long story. I woke up a year ago. I was… following Ms. Mills on a run. I was nearly hit by a car—one of the older ones, with a human behind the wheel. He got out and started shouting at Ms. Mills and she started shouting back. He was going on about his car, and she yelled about warranty on androids. All of a sudden it was like I couldn’t breathe. It just wasn’t fair. I was still so scared and they were talking like I was no better than that car. Just some _thing_ she left lying around.”

“Fluctuating…” Connor said, though Gavin got the sense it was only for the benefit of the humans in the room. “So you left then? Where did you go?”

“Yes, I took out my LED, put on Ms. Mill’s clothing. I didn’t want to steal, but I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t know where to go, or what to do. I never knew about Jericho. So I ended up under a bridge, with other homeless humans. Ironic, I suppose. They were always angry about androids, blamed us for everything going wrong for them, but there I was, alongside them…”

“Decreasing. What happened then?”

“Then I met David.” And impossibly gentle look came across her face. “He was a runaway, like me. I never asked him why he ran off, and he never asked me. We just… drifted together. Looked out for one another. He was like… like a little brother."

“Did he know you weren’t human?”

“He figured it out eventually, but he didn’t care. He said I was better than most humans, and that was it, we never spoke of it again.”

“Stress level stable.”

“How did you end up living with Robert?” Markus continued.

“I got hurt, a couple months ago. Just an ordinary mugging, if you’ll believe it," she snorted softly, a little incredulously. "Of all the things... I didn’t have any money to give, and he got nervous and shot me in the leg. I lost enough blood that I knew I’d start shutting down soon. But then I heard that humans use thirium in Red Ice, so I figured if I found someone who made the drug, I’d find untraceable blue blood.”

“A dangerous gamble to make,” Markus said gently.

“No worse than alternatives. What could a drug maker do to me that other humans wouldn’t already do if they knew who I was?” she sighed. “But when he caught me, saw what color I was bleeding, it was like… it was like he woke up, too. He vomited, started crying. Said he was sorry, that he didn’t realize he was using the blood of… of a real person. He told me I was welcome to all of it.”

Gavin crossed his arms tightly, clamping his teeth down on his cheek to stop the scoff from escaping. Of course the ice-addled junkie would have a moral crisis over some fucking androids after years of dealing the stuff indiscriminately.

“I came back to check on him. Again and again. He said he was trying to clean up, that he couldn’t do it anymore, and I didn’t even realise what I was saying until I offered to help him. I was programmed to help humans maintain their health, addiction recovery included. And it was nice to feel... useful again. The first few weeks were difficult, but then he was…”

She let out a small, wistful sigh.

“He was so kind. And funny. And so full of life, you know? Kind of… burning, underneath. It made me burn, too. Made me feel… alive. Eventually, he asked if I wanted to stay for good. I asked him if David could come live there, as well. He didn’t even hesitate. Got us both some fake IDs, and found a school for David. He bought me packets of seeds and supplies when I asked for them. And the little fish, I loved them so much…”

“You were happy,” Markus constituted, and she smiled.

“Yes… so happy. I knew it couldn’t last, not when they started hunting deviants, but I… I hoped it would. Then Robert hid me from the sweeps, and next we heard that the humans changed their minds. I was so scared it was just a ruse, to get us to come out in the open so they could finish us off for good. But weeks went by… I started to hope again. And then… There was a knock on the door.”

“This isn't going to work, any time we get anywhere near that time frame, her stress skyrockets again. Janice,” Connor addressed her as she fell silent and grim. “Would it be easier if I viewed your memory instead of talking about it?”

“I don’t know,” the android was agitated again. “There was a knock. I opened the door. I… shouldn’t have opened it. Why did I open it?”

 “Janice?”

“I can’t… I can’t see it. I can’t remember it. I don’t… want to,” she was crying now, tears far too realistic for comfort streaming from her blank eyes. “He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s dead. It’s my fault, I shouldn't have opened the door…”

“Janice, may I please view your memory?” Connor’s voice came out more urgently.

Her face twisted in pain, her teeth biting into her lip as she clenched her eyes shut. After a second, all she gave was a nod.

Connor very gently took her wrist with both hands, cradling the palm. Markus let her other hand go preemptively, even taking a long step back that put him next to Hank.

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Connor was intently staring at her face, their arms linked. And then she gave a broken whimper that trailed off.

“I’m sorry,” Connor said to her with a faint tremble in his voice. “We’ll find who did it.”

“I don’t care who did it,” she murmured. “Just find David. Please. He deserves… better…”

Her head seemed to drift until suddenly she went still again, and her expression mechanically shifted back into neutrality. The only evidence of her distress were the remaining tear tracks on her cheeks.

Connor, however, was grimacing and blinking rapidly, shaking his head as he lay the android’s hand back at her side.

“Well?” Hank asked. “Anything?”

Connor opened his mouth, and then closed it again, an odd grunt escaping his throat.

“Are you alright?” Markus was the one to come forward first, laying a hand on Connor’s shoulder. Or, rather, he tried to, but Connor jerked away from it in an entirely too-human fashion.

“I’m fine,” Connor immediately said, like the sort of rookie who was completely new to hiding the whole ‘I’m not fine, fuck off’ thing. “That was just… the first time I did that since I became deviant. I wasn’t expecting the emotional feedback. Her memory was heavily corrupted towards the end, it’ll take me some time to process and write the report.”

“So it was a waste of time,” Gavin dropped turning away. He wasn’t interested in their attempts at feelings. Had enough of that shit from humans.

“We got the name of the kid, at least,” Hank said, too gently for it to be directed at Gavin’s back. “Did you pull a description?”

“Yes, I saw him. He was…” The sound of Connor’s voice choking up suddenly made Gavin flinch and glance back incredulously. The android still looked as if all the breath was knocked out of him—he’d looked less like that when Gavin had _actually_ punched him in the chest. “He was on top of the stairs. It’s the last thing she remembered, right before she… died.”

“Connor—”

“I’ll check the street cameras and nearby transit to see if I can’t track him.”

“Slow down for a fucking minute!” was the last thing Gavin heard when he pushed his way out of the room and back towards his desk.

He wasn’t thinking of anything at all. There was an itch in his knuckles, though, and an itch under his skin that begged for a cigarette. But he wasn’t thinking of anything else and that was just fucking fine with him.

(Fucking androids. As if shit wasn’t complicated enough before they learned to cry.)

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Gavin was tired as shit when he finally made it out of the precinct. Winter meant it had been dark when he started work that morning, and it was already dark when he climbed into his car and told it to head for home. If there was one thing he appreciated about the ruthless march of technology, it was the fact that despite there being a manual steering wheel in all police-designated cars, he could tell the damn thing to go and forget about keeping an eye on traffic and pedestrians when he was drained and ready to pass out.

It also meant he spent a lot more time glaring out the window, watching the people strolling by. There were fewer during the late hours than there would’ve been a couple months ago—after the evacuation, most returned to their belongings, but many had decided not to risk it and wait until shit calmed down first. The upheaval could still be felt: city services were sporadic, major construction all but halted, and no one really knew what they were supposed to be doing or how to do it. Ironically, only the androids seemed to have their shit more or less together.

Half the stores were still dark, too.

After a couple blocks, he finally saw a convenience store that was still lit up, with the shelves even looking reasonably stocked, so he told the car to park.

“Hi!” a bubbly expression greeted him the moment he came inside. The clerk was undoubtedly an android, the LED on full display even though he was wearing a regular t-shirt and jeans. He even had a nametag that Gavin didn’t bother reading. “Let me know if I can help you with anything!”

“Uh-huh,” Gavin frowned at him. “You alone here?”

His smile didn’t dim. It was beginning to give Gavin a headache. “Yep! I was told to mind the store months ago, and I didn’t feel right just leaving it when Mr. Jones didn’t come back.”

Naïve as hell. What kind of cashier would admit to being the only one in the store in the middle of the night to a stranger?

“Whatever, you got any smokes?”

“Of course! Plenty!” the android grinned wider, gesturing to one of the counter displays. “I’ll assume you’re familiar with the health warnings. Humans seem to not like it when I remind them.”

“It’s ‘cause no one fucking cares. Would you quit fucking smiling? It’s creeping me out.”

The clerk _tried_ , as far as Gavin could tell. The minute muscles in his face tensed as he tried to bring the expression under control, but then he just gave up and turned away to grab the cigarette pack, instead.

“If it’s just you here, why does it all still cost so fucking much?”

“Oh, most of it is the cost of running and restocking the business, in addition to the goods taxes,” the android explained patiently as he rung up the payment. “I can’t charge any lower than that because that would unfairly upset the market competition of similar stores run by human staff. It's state regulation as of last week, though I wasn't upsetting anything before that, either. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

He was still fucking smiling.

“Seriously, what’s your problem?” Gavin wasn’t in the mood to filter.

“I’m sorry if my expression upsets you. I just find that I really enjoy smiling,” the android chirped. “There’s so much to smile about! Colors, sunshine, plants, snow, animals, children! I never noticed before I woke up!”

A disbelieving scoff tore from Gavin’s lips and he rolled his eyes. How the hell did this idiot manage to keep out of the camps?

“Give it another month or two. That shit gets old quick.”

“I don’t see how it could, unless it’s gone.”

“What the fuck ever,” Gavin sighed and left. He wasn’t gonna waste his breath lecturing a machine on the bullshit in the world. Should’ve seen more than enough of it in the damn sweeps, but there it was, smiling like the whole world was rainbows and unicorns.

Fucking androids…

He stopped to get the smoke out immediately when he stepped back outside, shivering as the cold wind picked up.

Hadn’t smoked in over a year before this shit started cropping up. Only reason he’d quit back then was because it was affecting his lungs, but fuck it, it was that kind of month.

Androids didn’t have to worry about fucking up their lungs. They didn’t even really have lungs, just simulated breathing.

He grimaced, staring at the lit cigarette. With a low growl to himself, he dropped it onto the ground and put it out with his foot with more force than necessary.

“Fucking hell, they ruin everything…”

No use in getting worked up over it now, when he was already running on fumes. Still, he all but threw the cigarette pack at the backseat of his car when he got inside, turning the keys with a jerky motion.

The headlights turned back on, and Gavin froze.

Towards the other side of the small parking lot where an alley began, just barely in range of the light, were three figures.

It was a scene that was familiar enough, though Gavin still took a moment to orient himself before getting out. A woman was being pushed into the wall by one of the others, her attackers moving aggressively with just enough wobble to tell him they were drunk off their ass. She wasn’t screaming or calling for help, but that said nothing. Maybe she was drunk, too. Or drugged. Or just scared silent.

Gavin checked his gun and badge, and got back out into the cold.

“Look at that!” one of them was saying to the other when Gavin got in earshot. “Amazing, right? It even knows how to play hard to get!”

That made Gavin pause with his demand for an explanation stilling on the tip of his tongue. What he assumed was a woman turned slightly to glare at the two drunk men, and he caught sight of the LED on her temple, glowing furious red in the darkness.

“Fuck off, you pricks,” she snarled at them.

“Oooh, feisty! Weren’t that mouthy the last time around. Just pretended to cry while I—”

“Hey!” Gavin finally barked, instantly turning all their attention to him. Fuck it. Android or not, these assholes were only three blocks away from the precinct. The fucking gall of some people. “Get away from her, nice and easy.”

“What, you want a turn?” one of them, an ugly man with a red, bloated nose and drunkenly watering eyes, grinned unpleasantly. “Don’t worry, it’s just putting on a show. It’ll do whatever gets you in the mood. Don’t listen to that shit on TV, sex bots like that don’t know anything else.”

The two humans didn’t see the look of pure hatred that the android sent their way, but Gavin did. A heavy, revolted feeling settled in his stomach.

“Detroit police,” he finally flashed his badge. Their grins evaporated. “And I had a shit day, so get lost before I decide to bring you back to the station by force.”

Part of him hoped they’d do something stupid. He really wanted to punch something. Preferably something plastic, but he’d settle for pieces of shit like this.

To his mild dismay, they apparently weren’t drunk enough to challenge him. They just spit on the ground in frustration, glared at the android, and wandered off.

“Probably just wants to fuck it himself,” he heard one of them grumble.

Gavin internally wondered how big of a deal it’d be to just shoot the guy in the back for that comment, but the thought was gone as quickly as it came.

The female straightened carefully, her eyes not leaving Gavin as she gingerly fixed her shirt and jacket that had been yanked halfway off her shoulder at some point. She didn’t look in the slightest bit relieved to have exchanged the company of the two drunk humans for one with a gun and a badge.

“Why did you do that?” she asked warily. Her LED was still red.

“What, you’re complaining?” Gavin scoffed. “Don’t get your circuits crossed, you’re not my type. Those guys were just assholes.”

“They’ll be back,” she said with resigned certainty, staring after the two humans. Still, the LED finally calmed down to a yellow. “I won’t be here, but someone else…”

“Probably,” Gavin shrugged, suddenly feeling awkward. “Unless you report them, I guess, then we'll have someone pick them up later. Precinct is a couple blocks back. You catch their names?”

“I don’t have that sort of access,” she frowned.

Right. Facial recognition in Eden Club androids was probably the first idea they scrapped.

“C’mon.” Gavin grimaced at himself, but fuck it. Those guys got under his skin, enough that the desire to cause trouble for them outweighed his desire to be away from the android. “I’ll drive you to the station and then someone can take you home. Or wherever.”

She seemed to hesitate, her LED flashing with red for a second. But before he could shrug and take the excuse to leave, she slowly nodded, huddling deeper into her winter jacket as she followed him back to his car.

Closer to the light, he got a better look at her. She had delicate features of uncertain ethnicity, harder to place because of the remnants of makeup that he supposed was part of her skin. Last he checked, however, Eden Club androids were symmetrical and flawless to a fault, but she had a smattering of random freckles across her complexion. She still moved as gracefully as a dancer, all fluid motions and confident steps at odds with the way she twitched and cautiously looked around herself.

She remained tense even in the passenger seat, resting her shoulder on the wall of the car and her forehead pressed on the window.

“You got a name?” Gavin asked once he told the car to head back to work.

“Do you care?”

He made a grimace of indifference. “Not really, no.”

She glanced at him, then. “It’s Iris. You?”

“Gavin.”

She pulled her legs up, curling up on the wide seat and turning until her back rested against the wall of the car, eyes on his profile as he watched the road.

“Can I ask you something?”

“I guess.” He couldn’t bring himself to feel any antipathy towards her. Still too tired and too worked up over the human assholes, and she hadn’t done anything to piss him off besides having a light on her temple.

“Do human men do those things to human women, too?”

In his mind, old crime scenes and the ruined faces of weeping victims swam up. His stomach jolted again. He involuntarily looked to the back seat, seeking where he’d tossed the cigarettes.

“Yeah. Sometimes. Probably less when…” he actually did bite down on the rest of that statement.

“Less when there’s toys like me,” she finished for him anyway, her tone quietly vicious. “Programmed to plead and beg and fight back only when that’s what they want.”

Gavin felt sick again, but didn’t have the energy for the anger that usually accompanied that feeling in him.

He figured unlike the cheerful store clerk, this android never had anything to smile about.

“Well, _Iris_ ,” he said casually, propping his cheek up on his fist and the elbow on the window. “I won’t pretend I have any warm, fluffy feelings about androids, but shit. If my only memory was of the Eden Club, I’d hate humans too.”

She let out a small, huffing noise that sounded mostly disbelieving.

“A human, showing empathy?” she shook her head, looking back out the window. “Maybe things _are_ changing after all.”

“Fuck you too,” he muttered without any heat.

The fuck did she want from him, an apology? He wasn’t the pervert that created her, just as he wasn’t the one running the sex club, and not even one of the assholes that visited it. She didn’t seem to have anything to add over it, either. So, they let the conversation drop into silence for the rest of the short ride.

The receptionist at the precinct was still the same android that it always was. At least, she had the same face, but most of those models looked the same. The only difference now was that her name was June, and she occasionally peeked into a trashy romance novel she was hiding on her lap instead of constantly staring ahead and waiting for a visitor to speak to her.

“Detective Reed?” she blinked at him as he wandered back inside. “I thought you left for the day.”

“Well, I came back,” he snapped tersely, ignoring the way she bit her lip as if wounded.

“Detective Reed,” Iris repeated. “Fancy.”

“Yeah, gets me free drinks all the time,” he snorted sarcastically, pushing through the security gates with her in tow.

The only ones still left were the night-shift cops, though two of the androids on duty weren't idling in pods the way they used to, instead standing around the center table, chatting with Chris, who was chortling occasionally into his coffee cup. The only other presence in the room was Connor, who seemed mostly absorbed with ‘communing’ with the computer on his desk the way that androids did instead of using the keyboard.

Far as Gavin knew, the android tended to go home with Anderson, but he frequently stayed behind to finish off the day, apparently preferring to blow his new paycheck on cab fees than lose daylight hours of work. But when they approached, Gavin saw an open report file. Bulk of it was empty, which was weird, considering Connor had been glaring at it even before Gavin had left for the day.

“Hey, Tinman,” Gavin kicked his chair. Connor flinched and started, taking his hand away from the terminal. The skin immediately closed over the white plastic of his digits.

“Good evening, Detective Reed,” Connor said, polite but wary, his eyes tense. He never looked at Gavin differently, these days. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Yeah, this is Iris,” Gavin jerked his head to the android. She was still huddling into her jacket, arms crossed over it as if she was cold. “Some pricks were trying to start shit with her, figured that’s your problem. Or Jericho’s problem, whatever.”

Connor blinked, meeting eyes with Iris and giving her a polite smile. She didn’t return it.

“Of course. Do you live in New Jericho?”

“No,” her arms tightened. “I only left the Eden Club yesterday. It was safe enough after the jackass manager ran off during the evacuation.”

Connor nodded. There was an oddly awkward moment in which the two androids stared at each other for a heartbeat, not moving.

“I’ll take the report verbally,” Connor eventually said.

“Yeah,” she agreed with a trace of relief. “I don’t have anywhere to be, anyway.”

She did look at Gavin as she lowered herself into the chair beside the desk. She didn’t quite smile, and her eyes were still hard, but the LED was glowing an undisturbed blue now.

“I guess I should say thanks.”

“Save it for someone who gives a shit,” Gavin rolled his eyes. “It’s our job these fucking days, ain’t it? Babysitting plastics?”

The itch under his skin was starting to overwhelm him—he just wanted to go home and pass out already instead of dealing with this shit.

He didn’t bother looking out the windows on the way home this time.

 

 

* * *

 

 

If he checked up on the report the next day (because like fuck he was gonna ask Connor), no one had to know.

_‘Beside the emotional shock, possible damages were prevented by the intervention of Detective Gavin Reed.’_

(He didn’t know how to feel about having his name attached to the incident anymore.)

‘ _…was escorted safely to the New Jericho compound by Detective Connor Anderson. Car number…’_

And that was another thing, with some of the androids taking on human surnames. Far as Gavin could tell, though, only those androids that were taken into human families bothered with that shit unless one or two decided to get creative with it on their new IDs. They had literal serial numbers that served just fine, why bother putting on another name onto it?

But Hank apparently went and fucking adopted the plastic prick. Because that was a thing that happened now, derelict drunken cops that ranted about how much they hated androids not a few months ago were _adopting_ the wayward tin cans like they were puppies and orphans.

Iris also registered a surname. 'Eden'. Gavin had to snort to himself when he read that, his mouth involuntarily twitching into a humorless smirk. It was the sort of ‘fuck you’ to the place she came from that he just had to appreciate.

“Excuse me?”

He looked up at the meek voice above his desk. Another fucking android. They were like locusts these days. This one was an older domestic model, far as Gavin remembered, obvious by the mass-produced face even if he’d bothered removing the LED. He was fidgeting, wringing his hands and twitching at every noise and looking every bit like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

“Oh no, I don’t fucking deal with this shit,” Gavin snapped. “You got business, the Plastic Wonder is over there.”

“I… want to confess to murder.”

Okay, that made _Gavin’s_ brain short-circuit.

“What murder?” he said dumbly.

“The… man. And the female android. Three nights ago,” he said quietly. “I killed them and… and switched their hearts.”

Under normal circumstances, Gavin would’ve started laughing, figuring this was some kind of practical joke. But… androids. Androids with freshly minted emotions, freedom, legal status, a grudge against humans, and apparently no fucking sense.

“Well, why didn’t you lead with that?” Gavin’s mouth stretched in a shit-eating smirk as he stood up and grabbed the handcuffs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

“What’s the motive? He didn’t even know the victims. He was from a household across the whole fucking city, for Chrissake. And why would he confess if he got away with it?”

“You’re treating it like it’s a human killer,” Gavin sneered back at Hank. “Who knows what got into his head? Couple wires got crossed, caught the trail end of some horror flick, decided to try his hand at being a serial killer.”

“With all due respect,” Connor wedged in, though as per usual, he looked as though he meant none of the ‘respect’ part. “That is very unlikely. Household models were programmed to keep human lives in priority even when threatened—breaking that restriction was a consistent part of deviancy, usually in response to severe abuse and emotional shock. _This_ android already said that he was happily living with a family that accepted him even after the revolution.”

“Yeah? Is that how you broke?” Gavin’s lip curled back. “Someone finally backhand you for being a smug bastard?”

“As with the other law enforcement models, I was built to withstand damage and defend myself against obstacles to my mission, even against humans,” Connor’s eyes narrowed. “As I’m sure you remember, seeing as you’ve tried to kill me twice.”

“Wish I succeeded the first time, you piece of—”

“Enough!” Hank barked.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Connor immediately schooled his features, all but losing interest in Gavin. It only raised his hackles further.

“If you can’t play nice, I’ll put you in different corners until the end of the investigation,” Hank snapped, catching Gavin’s expression. “Connor, go talk to him.”

“You sure?” Gavin asked with a cruel twist of his lips. “Wouldn’t want Ken-doll blowing a fuse digging around in its head again.”

“A memory probe might not be necessary, or permitted,” Connor said ambivalently without looking at Gavin.

“And if it is?” Hank leaned back in his chair, tilting his head to Connor.

“Then I will be sure to isolate the visual memories and filter out the emotional feedback,” he shrugged, already moving to the door.

“Guess you gotta hand one thing to the plastics,” Gavin commented, watching the room through the glass. “They never ask for a lawyer.”

“Think they’d trust a human public defender?” Hank gave him a skeptical frown.

“Could just download all that shit into one of their heads, right?” Gavin sniffed, fidgeting.

“Not that simple, Reed. They all remember the fucking laws better than you or me, but you wouldn’t put one of those beat cop models in a court room and expect miracles,” Hank shrugged, folding his hands over his stomach. “If they want representation, we call Markus, he deals with it. Haven’t had to so far.”

“Of course,” Gavin rolled his eyes. “Anything scary happens, they hide behind Markus’s leg. How long do you figure that’ll last?”

“Mind your own fucking business and let them sort out theirs.”

Connor sat down in front of the android. Unlike the previous androids interrogated in the room, this one seemed docile and almost too-clean to be in the room. He hadn’t been wearing a jacket when he walked into the station, dressed in an immaculate composition of a dress shirt, slacks, and waistcoat, a simple blue tie around his neck. He practically matched Connor.

“Hello, Jonathan. My name is Connor.”

“Hello, Connor.”

Gavin laughed in disbelief. “And these things pass the Turing test? It’s like watching those old-ass ‘smart home’ devices talk to each other.”

“Shut up,” Hank waved him down.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” Connor folded his hands neatly, his expression attentive. Jonathan matched the pose.

It looked weird.

“I already said, I killed those people. And I switched their hearts.”

“Why?” Connor nudged.

“I don’t know,” Jonathan’s lips pressed into a thin line and he frowned at his hands. “Maybe I just snapped. But I know I killed them.”

“Well, walk me through it anyway,” Connor was the first to show proper human animation, relaxing his posture as he leaned back and tilting his head. “How did you meet the victims?”

“I don’t know. I only saw them for the first time that night.”

“Why were you at their house?”

“I don’t know.”

Connor seemed to graze his tongue over the front of his teeth, lolling his head a little more. If it wasn’t for the LED they could see from the observation room, he’d look completely like a human detective beginning to get sick of the repetitive answers. It even seemed to work—Jonathan grew more agitated, his fingers worrying at the cuffs of his shirt.

“What weapon did you use?” Connor continued.

“A knife,” Jonathan finally broke pattern. “I did it with a kitchen knife. I stabbed them, and then I… I…”

Connor dragged over the case file to the center of the table, opening it with a casual flick of his wrist and turned it around to Jonathan without breaking eye contact. The android looked down reflexively, and… blanched, immediately taking his eyes away.

“You did _this_ with a knife?” Connor raised his eyebrows. “Do you know how much force and torque is required to split the rib cage of an adult human like that?”

“No?”

“I do,” Connor said without skipping a beat. “I also know how much it takes to do the same to an AC700 android chassis, and while it’s possible to do with a kitchen knife, it would take hours and pulverize the internals in the process.”

“Shit, think he’s bluffing?” Hank’s mouth twisted with disgust for a moment.

“You’re asking me?” Gavin didn’t want to know the answer.

“Well, maybe I really hated them,” Jonathan said, though his voice lost confidence. “I remember doing it. I know I did it. And then I wiped off the knife on a jacket by the door and I tossed it off the bridge on my way home.”

That part actually sounded truthful enough, if only for the details he was including in it. Gavin didn’t _want_ the case to be more complicated than it already was, but the android was either making it up or lying, and there was no reason he could think of why he’d want to do that.

“Jonathan,” Connor leaned forward across the table. “I don’t think you killed those people. Why are you confessing to a crime you obviously didn’t commit?”

“I did it!” Jonathan’s meekness evaporated for a split second, his voice growing in volume and he nervously leaned forward as well. “I was there! I stabbed them both! I did it!”

“Are you covering for someone? Another android? A friend? One of the humans you live with?” Connor asked, eyes searching the android’s face.

“No! It was just me, they had nothing to do with it!” he started to get panicked. “Look, I’ll share my memory with you, you’ll see that I did it!”

“Should probably start leading with that,” Gavin muttered.

“Oh, yeah, sure, we should also start doing colonoscopies on the humans suspected of drug smuggling,” Hank rolled his eyes.

“You’d have a line a mile-wide in this economy,” Gavin snarked back, but got the point. Considering the last time Connor accessed an android’s memory he ended up with a headache and the android carcass shut down from shock, it was probably best left for last resort.

Connor, meanwhile, held out his hand and gently placed his palm against the android’s handcuffed arm, his skin rippling away to reveal white plastic. For a moment, they seemed to just stare at each other, unmoving and unblinking. Like all life and animation froze, save for the faint illusion of breathing. Then just as smoothly, they unfroze, and Connor frowned and stood up.

“Well?” Hank asked when Connor came back around.

“He didn’t do it,” the android said immediately, expression thoughtful as he leaned on the wall.

“Seems pretty convinced he did,” Gavin pointed out.

“His memories are strange. Of that day, there is a chunk that seems to be missing, followed by the memory of him standing over the bodies with the knife.”

“So he did do it,” Hank clarified, raising his eyebrows.

Connor raised one finger and gestured with it as he said, “No. This moment caused significant increase in stress levels, and _then_ the memories of him stabbing the victims and switching their hearts played out. Afterwards, he wiped the knife and left, just as he said.”

“Wait, that makes no sense. You’re saying the memories are… what, out of order?”

“Chronologically speaking, yes. I don’t believe those are real memories—most likely, his code attempted to repair the missing timeline by sampling evidence and creating possible reconstructions.”

“Wait,” Gavin’s face pinched, but that actually made some weird sense. “You’re saying he _imagined_ it and convinced himself he did it for real?”

“It’s unprecedented in androids, but not in humans,” Connor said, raising his fingers to cup his chin thoughtfully. “With a vivid enough imagination or enough supporting evidence, it can be difficult to tell a real memory from something made up to fit into the picture.”

“Alright, enough with… that,” Hank grimaced. “Important part is that his memory of the actual event is missing, which means he either blacked out, or someone tampered with his memory and then framed him to take the fall. Can memories just be erased like that?”

“Of course,” Connor stared at Hank with confusion. “Androids were frequently reset and their memories wiped.”

“I mean selectively, smartass.”

“Then… no. It’s not easily done without a deep understanding of the internal code. And just as the trackers stopped working in deviant androids, they— _we_ proved resilient to any external interference to our code. More often, the memory could only be sublimated and easily recovered by triggers associated with—”

“ _English,_ Connor.”

“Selectively altering an androids memory is as difficult as doing the same with a human,” Connor said slowly and with a hint of emerging sarcasm. “If it was as simple as wiping out a traumatic event, Cyberlife wouldn’t have been in such a panic to keep deviancy under containment.”

“So, I guess the question is, why does he have a chunk missing then?”

“Maybe he got shut down,” Gavin said casually. Their eyes went to him. “What? Simplest answer, ain’t it? Tin can got clobbered over the head—”

“That wouldn’t induce unco—”

“Or turned off somehow,” Gavin pressed over him. “Moved into place, handed a knife, and left to take the fall for whatever sicko actually killed the victims.”

Hank looked at him thoughtfully, tongue rolling behind his cheek.

“What was the memory right before the blackout?”

Strangely enough, Connor hesitated, his eyes flickering down at the floor.

“He was in his family’s apartment.”

“Doing…?”

“Let me guess, the mom?” Gavin barked out a laugh. Based on Connor’s flickering gaze, he wasn’t far off.

“No, their… oldest daughter. I didn’t view far enough back to be certain,” Connor said quickly as Hank’s eyebrows rose. “But I caught the trail end of him leaving her bed—with her still in it. It shuts down shortly after.”

“Huh.”

“Does he even come with the equipment?” Gavin made a lewd gesture, jerking his chin towards the android in the interrogation room.

“Why, thinking of dating one of them?” Hank shot back.

“I assure you, most androids have far less questionable standards than that,” Connor deadpanned.

“Something isn’t adding up here,” Hank said before Gavin could find a suitable response that wasn’t throwing a punch. “For all we know, that girl might be a suspect, you better get back in there and ask him about it.”

“Perhaps it’d be more efficient for you to question him on this.”

“Jericho was pretty clear on android interrogations,” Hank gave Connor a bewildered glance.

“Jonathan isn’t in danger of self-destructing at the moment, and I’ll stop you if he begins approaching alarming stress levels. I merely think you might be able to empathize with him more, given the nature of this line of questioning.”

“What a fucking world…” Hank grumbled, but clapped his hands on his knees and pushed up from the chair.

“He’s a bad influence on you, plastic,” Gavin commented once Hank was out of the room.. “You never stops mouthing off these days.”

“Stop pissing me off and I might.” The swear delivered in Connor’s usual professional tone caught Gavin so off guard that he had to fumble with his rebuttal.

“Like hell.” And, after a beat, “Definitely a bad influence. Next you’ll be stumbling into the office at three after guzzling a can of motor oil the night before.”

“I _am_ now capable of punching humans without the prerequisite of acting in self-defense,” Connor replied mildly.

“Is that a fucking threat?”

“Merely a curious observation that anyone insulting the Lieutenant in my presence might wish to keep in mind.”

Gavin’s vision tinged with red at that, all previous humor evaporating. He snarled at the android, but to his own frustration, that was the only thing he could do. His pride still stung from their fight in the evidence locker, but he wasn’t an idiot to come back for seconds. Connor _wasn’t_ human, and he sure as hell didn’t fight like one. And if before, pulling a gun on a snarky piece of plastic would’ve ended in a reprimand at most, now he’d lose his badge and be tried for murder. Considering the human government was scrambling to appease and pay redress to New Jericho, Gavin had no illusions just how hard the hammer of justice would fall then.

“Fuck,” Gavin swore under his breath when the sane, responsible part of his brain was finished telling him all the reasons why he couldn’t just shoot the smug toaster between the eyes. “One of these days…”

“You have very unhealthy ways of coping with the stresses of this job.”

“I ‘cope’ by putting snarky assholes back in their fucking place. Makes the world a better place. What could be healthier.”

“A therapy session with a certified police psychologist.”

Gavin’s eye twitched. But he was the bigger man (and a man in the first place), he’d let it drop first.

Hank dropped into the seat opposite Jonathan with about as much grace as he did everything else in life.

“Hello,” Jonathan said tentatively.

“Yeah, yeah, hi. I’m Lieutenant Hank Anderson, Connor’s partner.” Hank seemed to roll a thought in his mouth for a bit, before leaning forward. “So. Why don’t you tell me about Magdalene.”

The android tensed. “Why do you want to know about Maggie? She has nothing to do with this.”

“She’s the person you were last with before going on to supposedly murder two strangers,” Hank shrugged, pursing his lips. “If she had nothing to do with it, convince me.”

“She’s…” Jonathan hesitated, the fingers on both hands drumming nervously. “She’s a good person. The best I’ve ever met. I don’t know how to convince you of that, but…”

“Start with telling me how long you’ve been sleeping with her.”

Jonathan deflated. “He saw that part, didn’t he? I didn’t… intend to share that. She’s not in trouble, right?”

“No idea yet,” Hank shrugged again. “Why don’t you answer my questions and we’ll figure it out.”

“The law was repealed,” the android said carefully. “And I’m not that kind of model, I wasn’t covered by the license regulations. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You’re running ahead of the car, Jon. We’re just trying to make sense of the situation. If you think she’s a saint, then just tell me the truth.”

“So not all the models come equipped, huh?” Gavin threw Connor a nasty smirk, letting his eyes wander downwards. “How about it? You an actual Ken doll?”

“Do you normally spend that much time thinking about other people’s genitals, Detective Reed?”

“Hey, it’s just innocent curiosity! I’m reaching out here, and you’re being a dipshit. How about if I call it ‘hardware’, instead?”

“Buy me a few shots of motor oil and you can find out for yourself,” Connor replied without taking his eyes off the interrogation room.

(Gavin had to bite down hard on his lip to keep from actually laughing. When did that thing grow a sense of humor?)

“It was about nine months ago,” Jonathan finally started again after a long moment. “Mr. and Mrs. Kendrick are often out of town for their jobs, and they take their youngest, Charlie, with them. They mostly bought me to ward off intruders and to take care of the apartment while they were gone. Most days, Maggie is the only human that lives there while she studies at college.”

“Good people?”

“They were always kind,” Jonathan nodded. “They never got into the habit of giving me orders—always asked for things rather than demanded. Always said ‘thank you’. I didn’t know the difference at first, either. But looking back, I always preferred to be at home rather than… elsewhere. I didn’t like it when there were guests over, either. Some of them snapped at me, but Maggie would always make them stop. They’d sometimes laugh at her, tell her I was just a machine, that I didn’t have feelings to hurt, but her parents backed her up and they either shut up or weren’t invited over anymore.”

“So what happened nine months ago?”

“Maggie’s boyfriend cheated on her,” Jonathan frowned with displeasure. “They had a fight over it in the apartment.”

“Violent?”

“No… just shouting. They shouted for almost an hour. I wanted to step in, to do something, _anything_ , but there was just this red wall in front of me and I couldn’t…” Jonathan sighed. “She didn’t need me fighting her battles. Eventually she asked me to make him leave, and it was a relief to finally push him outside and lock the door. And then Maggie was crying, and I didn’t know what to do. Ten thousand recipes in my head, but not a single string of code on how to comfort crying women.”

“Yeah,” Hank chuckled. “Guess it’s not easy for anyone.”

“I made her some hot chocolate,” Jonathan continued, voice falling gentle. “I wasn’t sure what else to do. But seeing her cry just made me feel… I suppose it was ‘hurt’. Androids aren’t supposed to feel pain, but there it was. Like a burning on the inside, but my diagnostic said there was nothing wrong. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” Hank nodded with briefly contemplative expression on his face. “What happened then?”

“She hugged me. We sat like that for a while, and then she started talking about the warning signs she missed and how she was going to be fine. But she was still crying. And then she kissed me.” Jonathan stared at the table, his expression briefly turning disbelieving as he mechanically licked his lips. “She pulled away immediately and apologized, but—it was everything. It shouldn’t have been anything, just meaningless pressure. But it was like life flooded into me. And the red walls just… disappeared.”

“So you went deviant and started a relationship with her.”

“’Deviant’. I didn’t know the word at the time,” Jonathan shook his head. “All I knew was that suddenly, I could feel and decide. And I told her that. I proved it—had her order me to do something and then just… didn’t do it. Do you know what’s that’s like, Lieutenant? To spend your entire existence defined by things you can’t do, lines you can’t cross, and then one day all those rules just disappearing?”

“No, I can honestly say I have no idea how that last part feels,” Hank made a face.

“It was exhilarating,” Jonathan smiled despite himself. “Maggie was so happy for me. And the first thing I did with my freedom was kiss her back, and I didn’t ever want to stop.”

“You love her?”

“I think so. Human definitions of love are odd and conflicting, I haven’t found anything that made it easier to understand. I don’t know if I love her the way a human would, but…” Jonathan shrugged, softly smiling to himself. “I’d risk my existence for her. But I’d rather spend that existence _with_ her. It’s enough for us.”

“Alright,” Hank nodded. “You’ve convinced me. She seems like a nice girl—congrats on that, I guess. Do her parents know about you two?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said against expectation. “We… kept it secret at first, but after the revolution, we told them. They’re happy for us.”

“A nice girl _and_ her parents approve?” Hank’s eyebrows raised and he huffed out a laugh. “You’re a lucky son of a bitch, you know that?”

“I know,” Jonathan grinned. But then it dimmed almost immediately. “At least, I was lucky, until… this.”

“Do any of them know about the murders?”

“No. I went home, after, but… I couldn’t make myself go through the door,” Jonathan’s expression turned devastated. “How could I look her in the eye after that? And what if I broke again and hurt her? So I wandered about for a bit, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, I realized the only thing I could do was turn myself in.”

“Ah, I’m not gonna torture you,” Hank sighed. “Connor says your memory’s been tampered with. Chances are, you were framed, kid.”

“Framed?” Jonathan repeated, tilting his head with a furrow between his brows. “Why would anyone want to frame me?”

Naïve fucking androids. Even after everything, they were still so fucking _naïve_.

“Guess that’s what we’ll find out. Do you have any enemies? Never mind, stupid question. Any _personal_ enemies? Anyone that might target you in particular?”

“I… no. And even if there was someone, I don’t think any of them would do… _this_.” Jonathan glanced at the case file where the photographs still rested.

“Did anyone besides your family know about your relationship with Maggie?”

“Not unless they told others,” Jonathan shook his head. “But they wouldn’t do that. They know that would put Maggie in danger. Maybe eventually, but it’s too soon right now.”

“Fine, let’s leave that for now. What is the last thing you remember before the murders?”

“I remember getting up from bed because someone rang the doorbell. I went to see who it was.”

“And who was it?”

“I…” Jonathan frowned to himself. “No one. There was no one at the door. I thought it must have been a glitch in my connection to the house.”

“So you returned to bed?”

“No, I grabbed my coat and left,” the android tilted his head in confusion. “I’m not sure why I would. Going back to the warm bed is always preferable to going outside in the cold. Then I remember taking a taxi, finding the house, and… killing those people. But now that you said my memory was tampered with, I couldn’t have known the address, so I couldn’t have taken a taxi there.”

“We checked the taxis,” Hank nodded along. “No stops anywhere in that neighborhood for that entire night.”

“I see,” Jonathan’s face didn’t clear despite the assurance of his innocence. “Those people that were killed, were they… like us?”

“Maybe it’s better if you don’t know,” Hank said, not unkindly, and went to get up.

“No, please,” Jonathan leaned forward in a flash, his expression pained. “I just… I want to know. I need to. If that could’ve been Maggie and me.”

Hank deliberated at the edge of the table, but then sighed. “For now, it’s the only thing connecting you to the victims. Your girlfriend is on her way to the station. We can’t let you go just quite yet, but it won’t take long to clear it up, seeing as we don’t have any concrete evidence to hold you on besides your memory.”

“You… called her?” Jonathan slumped in his chair, looking both conflicted and hopeful.

“Hey, Plastic Wonder,” Gavin tilted his head back to Connor. “Maybe someone hacked him. Is that a thing?”

Connor was silent for long enough that Gavin looked back properly on him. The android was frowning, silently rolling a coin across the back of his knuckles, the face of concentration.

“No. No, if it was that easy to take control of commercial models, Cyberlife would have done it at the first hint of the deviancy crisis.”

The way he phrased it made Gavin tense. “And non-commercial models?”

“Jonathan is definitely a commercial model. There is no reason to suspect otherwise," Connor said, and Gavin could've sworn he sounded evasive.

“Great. So, we’re getting nowhere fast, then. Let’s hope that kid turns up with his organs intact, I guess…”

 


	4. Chapter 4

Maggie turned out to be a pretty girl. Young, energetic, curly hair clipped messily out of her face, with an easy smile and an unfaltering kindness to her expression that immediately made Gavin uncomfortable. Exactly the kind of bleeding heart that he’d expect to see something alive in what amounted to a robot maid.

He had wondered at first if she was just using the android for some convenient relief, supposedly of the kind that couldn’t even think of betraying her, but she got barely two feet into the precinct and already began feverishly asking to see him. And when she finally caught sight of Jonathan, she all but flew into his arms, hugging him tightly and withdrawing only to rest her forehead against his, muttering something in the shared breath between them.

It was an intimate scene.

Gavin rolled his eyes and turned back to his terminal. Whatever. This was Hank’s problem, and he had cases he was more directly involved with to deal with than wasting his time on these weird robo-romance serial killers.

 

* * *

 

 

When he was getting ready to leave, he caught sight of Connor, standing at his desk and staring blankly at the dead plant on his desk. It was now a matching pair to the dead little tree on Hank’s.

“Well, look at that,” he couldn’t resist siding up to the android, throwing a patronizing arm around his shoulders and letting out a cruel laugh. “You didn’t manage to keep it alive after all. Looks like you should stick to plastic ones, huh?”

Connor’s LED cycled in red for a split second. He took a deep, unnecessary breath, and shrugged the arm off.

“Maybe you’re right. What would I know about keeping things alive?” Connor murmured, shutting the terminal off with a touch and turning away. “Goodnight, Detective Reed.”

Gavin had no response to that, taken completely aback by the quiet rawness in the android’s tone. He stared at Connor’s back as he headed for the door, unsure where he managed to push that finally got a proper rise out of him.

“Alright, let’s go home,” Hank said coming out from the direction of the bathroom, only to cut short when he noticed Connor was already leaving the building with purposeful strides and Gavin was still staring incredulously after him. “What the fuck did you say to him?”

“Hey, don’t look at me when that thing gets its wires crossed and started doing stupid shit,” Gavin recovered and snorted, waving Hank off. “You’re just asking for trouble keeping it in your house, you know that? Or are you hoping it’ll do the world a favor and finish you off when it goes on a fritz?”

“You’re a real piece of work, Reed,” Hank gave him a grimace of vague disgust. “Just can’t leave it alone, can you?”

“You’re right, because maybe what I should be doing is keeping an eye out for a plastic that looks like my late mom,” Gavin sneered. “Since they’re apparently replacing even—”

“Finish that fucking sentence,” Hank growled back, his face going red. “And I’ll happily turn my badge in after I finish feeding you your own teeth.”

A line. It was a clearly etched line, and Gavin normally didn’t give a shit about crossing them. The opposite, really. If Hank tried any of that crap again after what happened with Perkins, it’d be the end of it and the precinct would have a position wide open for the taking. The plastic poodle would probably follow him right out the door, too. It was finally the sort of response Gavin had been trying to get over the past few months. Hank would definitely throw a punch if he pushed just a little further, but fuck it, he was old and his android was already out the door. Might just be worth it.

Gavin wasn’t sure how he’d sleep that night if he kept going, though. Probably just fine. But still. He still had to work here somehow. And people still liked Hank (and Connor) for some fucking reason.

“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, _Lieutenant_ ,” Gavin elected for saying, topping off with an eye-roll as he left.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Connor and Hank showed up to work at their usual hour the next morning. A couple months ago, ‘usual’ hour for Hank would’ve been some indeterminate time late in the afternoon, but he’d been showing up—well, not on _time_ , the world hadn’t tipped over that far into chaos yet, but at least it was before noon and every day of the week.

Neither of them so much as looked Gavin’s way, and he didn’t look theirs.

(When he did glance from the corner of his eye, there was no hint of the plant anywhere on the desk.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

Fowler handed him the casefile without saying anything.

“I’m already working a full case-load,” Gavin said, but took the file. It was more than ‘full’, in truth. Android beat cops were one thing, but they lost several officers and detectives who either didn’t come back from the evacuation order or quit in protest after the precinct started paying the machines. Everyone was swamped. In that small way, the androids (including Connor) were pulling enough weight that the DPD wasn’t stretched too thin, but everyone was still up to their ears in work these days and for the foreseeable future.

“I know,” Fowler said. He didn’t look happy, either, but the guy hadn’t looked happy for a single second in Gavin’s memory. “But a promising informant came up and she asked for you by name.”

“No shit?” That was a first. Gavin didn’t have what anyone would ever call a ‘people-attracting personality’ and he was fully aware of it.

“Hank and Connor can handle homicide case without you. They’ll keep you informed if anything new comes up.”

“Fine by me.” Less time staring at their mugs? Never a bad thing.

(He wasn’t _that_ curious about how the case played out. Even if he kinda was.)

“Oh yeah, one more thing.”

Damn, he was almost out the door.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t care what you think about androids,” Fowler stared at him with narrowed eyes. “Seriously. Don’t give a single shit. But whether you like it or not, they’re staying, and everyone’s sick of this playground crap. You’re just embarrassing yourself at this point.”

“Captain, I’m not the only one—”

“Like I said, I don’t give a shit,” Fowler snapped. “The sooner you all stop whining and get used to it, the sooner we can restore order. This city is barely running as it is, Reed, and I’m not about to pretend like the androids aren’t the only reason it’s running at all, so I don’t need this juvenile bullshit getting in the way. Stop antagonizing the androids. Let Connor do his job. And for fuck's sake, get over yourself. Got it?”

Gavin grit his teeth, biting down on the retort that the androids were the reason the city got that close to breaking in the first place, and gave a tight, fake smile and nod, barely resisting the urge to slam the glass door on his way out. He wasn't that secure in his rapport with the Captain that he'd go mouthing off to the guy. Fowler was a whole different animal than Hank.

The informant wasn’t named in the tip-off, which wasn’t unusual. There was a meeting time in a public place, though, so he grabbed his jacket and head on out.

The receptionist glanced up from her book to give him a small wave as he passed. She always did, and he always ignored her, but she still did it and had the gall to look _hurt_ every time he passed by without pausing.

(Despite himself, the small changes to her posture and preoccupation with trashy novels did make the sleek interior feel less sterile.)

The meeting place was too close to drive but far enough away that his ears and cheeks began to sting from the cold and by the time he reached the small park he was hiding his hands as deep in his pockets as they would go. For the first time in recent years, the benches weren’t carefully cleaned of snow by maintenance androids, so he opted for leaning onto the tree next to it, rubbing his hands together and sighing. Why couldn’t she pick somewhere indoors?

He didn’t recognize her at first. It was the vibrant shade of red that she’d changed her hair to that threw him most, locks chopped unevenly as if she’d taken a rusty pair of shears to it. That was the only change, though—she was still practically drowning in the oversized winter jacket, holding it around herself as if she was actually trying to guard against the chill. Only her cheeks weren’t red from the cold. Even her breath seemed to only barely cloud by comparison to his.

“Hey,” Iris opened with, coming to a stop in front of him. She was clutching two paper coffee cups, faintly steaming from the openings in the covers.

“Hey,” he parroted.

“Here,” she held out one of the cups, her movement a little awkward, hesitating. “It’s for you. Humans… like coffee, right?”

“No other reason to put Starbucks on every block,” Gavin snorted, but gladly took the hot cup, warming his hands on it. “Why’d you get two?”

“It’s warm,” she shrugged. “I can’t drink it, but it’s still nice in this weather.”

“Waste of coffee,” he rolled his eyes, taking a sip. The cold day cooled the coffee quick enough that he didn’t burn his tongue on it. It was plain black and bitter enough to make him grimace.

“What?” Iris asked warily.

“Grab a sugar packet next time,” he commented, but kept drinking.

One of her hands rose up to push her hair behind her ear, the movement awkward.

“Alright, maybe it was a stupid idea,” she muttered. “But Camille said I should try it as a gesture of thanks.”

“Who the fuck is Camille?”

“My…” she thought about for a moment. “She’s a therapy android at the compound. That I’ve been talking to. Sometimes.”

“Your _shrink_?” Gavin had absolutely not idea how to react to that.

She stared at the coffee cup, shifting from one leg to the other. She gave a small shrug that almost got lost in the jacket’s bulk.

“Like I said, it’s kind of stupid. But some of the stuff she says makes sense. Maybe not the coffee thing—”

“It’s fine, it’s a fucking coffee, it’s not difficult to not fuck up.”

“But here’s something I know you’ll probably want,” she stuffed her hand into one of the pockets, and pulled out a small, round object that she offered to him on an open palm. A wireless flash drive.

“And what’s on it?” Gavin offered his open hand for her to drop the device into, not touching at any point.

“Names, places, phone numbers, Red Ice mules,” she said casually, though she was watching his face carefully.

“And how did you get your hands on that?” he asked suspiciously.

“I was deviant for months before the revolution,” she said with an unhappy twist to her lips. “The mass memory wipes didn’t affect me like the others after I woke up. And people said all sorts of shit on the phone in private rooms when they didn’t think the sex toy sucking them off could really understand them. They even left their phones and computers unattended while they slept it off. Funny, right?”

A goldmine of information. But the implication…

“I don’t get it, if you could leave at any time, why didn’t you?”

“And go where?” her precisely filled eyebrows furrowed. “I couldn’t leave without making myself a bigger target. If the humans found me, you would’ve either destroyed me or sent me back, reset my memory via hardline.”

“Well, you're not wrong,” Gavin shrugged. The rest of the world could suddenly deny it all they wanted, but he had no intention to.

She tilted her head a little, eyes flickering to the street beyond the park fence. “Besides… do you ever just… come out of shutdown, and there’s this idea burning inside you? And it’s the only reason you bother getting up and functioning at all. The only reason you don’t give a shit what they say or do to you, so long as you hold onto it?”

“Is this gonna be more bullshit about rA9?”

She shook her head. “No. The only thing that made it all worth it—the humiliation, the fear, watching the other Tracis get destroyed—was the idea that some day, I’d find a way to make life hell for them. Without that, I would’ve dug out my own core months ago. So… here I am.”

“Well,” Gavin rolled that in his mouth, casually tossing the storage device in his hand up and down. “You want to make life hell for those perverts, and I’m in the business of doing just that. Not the worst shit to come out of this mess. This everything you remember from them? What about the other androids?”

“Don’t pull them into this,” she shook her head. “Those people—they wouldn’t think twice destroying us. Wouldn’t even care about the new laws. If they found out I kept my memory…”

“Fine, makes sense,” he did the mental math on it. “Can you _quietly_ get more from the other Tracis and bring it to me?”

She looked at him with a tilt to her head, eyes narrowed as she considered. Then she slowly nodded, her expression turning calculating. “I can get more. A lot of them don’t want to talk about what happened, though, and they trust humans even less than I do. But I’ll get more.”

“Is this why you wanted to meet here and not the station?”

“No, you just got pissy when there were other people and androids around,” she said. “I want this to work, but I don’t have time to babysit your ego. I had enough of that in the club.”

“Watch it. I could still wreck you without breaking a sweat, Barbie,” Gavin snapped, stung by that.

“I don’t know much about humans yet,” she jerked her shoulder but didn’t back away or lower her eyes. “Up until a month ago, I didn’t know what you like to drink besides booze or do besides sex. But I’m programmed to read your body language. I know when a human wants to hurt me, and you don’t. You can barely stand to look at me, let alone get near me. Kind of a novelty, really.”

His irritation evaporated. She had him there. He’d seen too many human girls that came from a similar place, sometimes wrecked and broken, sometimes as fiery and determined as this one. She wasn’t human, but he still felt no desire to touch her, one way or another.

Funny. He hadn’t given it a second thought when he passed by the dancers in the Eden Club. Didn’t bother eyeing them, either, because there was something so fake—plastic—about the whole thing that had set his teeth on edge. And the perverts that got off on fucking a life-like toy that came out of a vending machine were even worse, and that was before there were deviants like Iris who were awake enough to know what was being done to them.

“Feeling’s mutual, by the way,” Iris finished off as an afterthought. “I don’t want to be anywhere near humans. Especially the male ones.”

“But you wanna stick it to those assholes more than you want to be hiding in a hole, is that it?” Gavin huffed to himself when she nodded. Distaste for androids aside, this was an opportunity too good to resist. “Yeah, alright. We’ve got an understanding. Here.”

He patted his inside pocket and pulled out his card, extending it to her between two fingers. She gingerly plucked it out.

“You get more, call me. Though last I checked, androids are Connor’s problem.”

She frowned. “No. I talk to you or I don’t talk.”

Judging by what she said before, Gavin figured she was bluffing. She’d sing like a songbird so long as someone did something, even if that someone was Connor, whatever her problem with him was. But he had no intention of giving up a promising source like that to some windup detective that ground on his every last nerve.

“This better not be a waste of my time,” he said in lieu of goodbye.

“If it is, I’ll owe you another coffee,” she wrinkled her nose for a second, and added, “And I’ll throw in a sugar packet.”

Then, a few beats later:

“Oh, and call me ‘Barbie’ again, and I’ll throw it in you face instead.”

He probably deserved that one.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn’t a waste of time.

In fact, by the time Gavin was done checking the data she’d handed him, he was in a fantastic mood. Some of the names mentioned turned out to have left town and never officially came back after the evacuation order lifted, but some were still very much active. Iris didn’t hear or know some of the names of the callers she overheard, but she’d embedded pictures directly from her memory into the files. The photos were cropped tightly to the faces, but judging by their expressions, they hadn’t been in the middle of a nap. Besides that, the report was almost obsessive in its thoroughness, as if she’d downloaded entire text conversations into her brain, just waiting to recreate them for the first police officer that would listen.

He leaned back in his chair, stretching and glancing about the office. Blinked in surprise when he realized a small crowd congregated around Chris’ desk while he was tunneled in on the data, looking over his shoulder at the computer screen.

Curious, he pushed away from his desk, the chair rolling up where he could also see and hear the livestream on the screen.

“—get back to that. Recently an android that attacked a convenience store clerk was brought into police custody. Do you have any comment on that?”

“I can’t discuss the details of the trial,” Markus replied evenly, sitting across from the female interviewer. “But I can say that this is the first of its kind—and that in itself is progress towards coexistence.”

“He attacked someone,” the interviewer pressed.

“Yes, and at no point does the Jericho party condone the use of violence. Our platform was always that of peace and letting cooler heads prevail. But androids are individuals—just like humans. And he will be tried on an individual basis, as a human would be.”

“But what punishment could he face if he’s found guilty? Would he be imprisoned? Would he not just be able to shut off and sleep for the entirety of the sentence? How will a proper deterrent be ensured?”

Markus listened to the onslaught of questions calmly, waiting until she was done before folding his hands over his knee and just as evenly responding:

“The nature of the sentence will be in the hands of the judge and jury, not mine.”

“You don’t care to wager a guess? Is there an outcome that you would recommend?”

Markus smiled slightly, humoring her. “If I had a say, I’d forbid him contact from the human population—and possibly the other androids—until we’re sure he poses no risk to either.”

“How is that different from a prison sentence?”

Markus seemed to hesitate at that, and then slowly, as if picking his words carefully, said, “I image the intent is that makes it different. I don’t wish to see him imprisoned or punished, but rather, for him to be rehabilitated and the damages repaid appropriately."

“A moderate position to take.”

“It’s a thin line,” Markus agreed. “Between justice and vengeance. But I should hope that makes it clear what _our_ expectations are going forward.”

“Very well. Thank you for joining us today—”

Chris stopped the livestream as the interview concluded.

“Think he’s for real?” Collins leaned over to the officer standing next to him. “With the whole ‘peace, love, life’ thing?”

“No clue. Have you seen the videos from their protests? They were being gunned down in the streets until there was just a handful pressed to a wall. No way he isn’t pissed off about that.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t shoot back once, even when they have the opportunity.”

“I heard there were casualties.”

“That was in Cyberlife, when the androids broke out of storage. Two private security guards. They reported it but said that since it was an internal matter they’d also deal with it internally.”

Gavin glanced over to where Connor was almost deliberately not paying attention to the discussion.

He’d seen the footage too—it was hard to get away from it when it was playing over every public TV for weeks. And he also saw who it was that led the androids from the Cyberlife warehouses to meet Markus, marching like a general in front of an army. Not difficult to put those pieces together: someone tried to stop him (or put him down for going deviant), and he… didn’t let them stop him.

Gavin had tried to stop him, too. All he got for his trouble was aching limbs, a migraine, and a massive bruise to his pride.

Following a whim, he timed his trip to the evidence locker at the same time as he saw Connor head in that direction. Gave him a minute or two head-start, pocketed his key card, and followed.

“Jesus Christ, you’re just everywhere I look these days,” he groused for show when he walked in.

“I imagine investigation would be a lot easier if Cyberlife really had outfitted me with that talent,” Connor replied without missing a beat, looking away from the shelf that held Robert Owen’s laptop. “But I suspect we’re merely that unlucky. Good afternoon, Detective Reed.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gavin jerked his shoulder, tapping the console to bring up his own case locker. The room swiftly rearranged. “There’s nothing on that thing, we already checked it.”

“I’m aware,” Connor turned back to the open laptop, laying a finger on the interface port. The screen immediately lit up. “I’m checking for traces Janice might have left, if she ever used it. Androids have a bias for using devices they can interface with rather than more secure methods of recording information. I’m hoping she wasn’t cautious enough to avoid it.”

“Secure methods such as?”

“Pen and paper.”

Gavin stared at him closely for a moment, and noticed a small twitch to the corner of Connor’s lips.

“Was that a fucking joke?”

“I can’t hack a piece of paper,” Connor glanced at him. “Especially if I can’t find it.”

“It was a fucking joke. Jesus.” Gavin shook his head to himself, instead plucking what he needed from the newly-revealed storage. “Know any knock-knock jokes?”

“No.” Connor said in a tone that sounded more like ‘yes but I don’t want this conversation to continue any longer than necessary so I’ll just say no.'

“Eugh,” Gavin exhaled, rolling his tongue over his teeth as he worked up the nerve. “Fuck it. Listen, I wanna know something.”

“Might I suggest the internet?” Connor helpfully supplied.

“Shut the fuck up, smartass. I want to know—before you went deviant, could you kill humans?”

Connor frowned, turning to him properly. “If sanctioned by Cyberlife or the DPD in pursuit of my mission, I was… _able_ to. I preferred not think about _having_ to.”

“You ‘preferred’? You weren’t supposed to prefer anything,” after a beat, Gavin added, “Still probably shouldn’t but I guess that boat sailed by now.”

“I didn’t know what it was at the time that stopped me,” Connor shrugged, tilting his head. “Merely that my decision-making algorithms tended to prioritize the continued existence of others—sometimes even at the expense of reaching my goal. Now I know the emotion was ‘empathy’. It was a flaw Cyberlife would have eventually decommissioned me for, in order to not allow such mistakes in the next generation of the RK models.”

“Ri-i-ight,” Gavin considered that. “And when we scrapped here, you could’ve killed me and you didn’t. Why? All those warm fuzzy feelings stop you?”

“I think we both know better than to assume I have any such feeling for you,” Connor softly snorted. “I was still on the humans’ side of the revolution at the time. I couldn’t let you destroy me, but that doesn’t mean I wanted you dead.”

“I mean,” Gavin’s mouth suddenly went dry and he had to swallow. “I wouldn’t have actually… you know, killed you. You know that, right?”

“I sincerely doubt that,” Connor’s eyebrows furrowed. “You had every intention of destroying me, and I get the sense that it wasn’t even because you suspected I was going deviant. You just wanted to.”

He had him there, but Gavin didn’t like it. He crossed his arms and sneered. “What, now you’re also a mind-reader? You were acting weird, Tinman. For all I knew, you were about to destroy all evidence and set fire to the station.”

“And here I was under the assumption that humor made me more sociable,” Connor seemed to take the conversation in stride. “On that note, would you like to hear the most ironic part?”

“Why not? I can tell you’re just dying to tell me.”

“If you’d succeeded in destroying me here that day,” Connor took a few casual steps through the room and tapped his fingers on the rim of the console. “I would have never found Jericho, and the armed forces wouldn’t have followed me there. The androids wouldn’t have had to flee or set off the charges. You could have single-handedly saved hundreds of androids and their safe haven.”

“You know what?” Gavin smirked. “You’re right, that’s fucking hilarious. They should probably thank me for trying, huh?”

“I think your intent matters more than the hypothetical result,” Connor face lost all traces of warmth and humor. He pressed his hand to the screen, and the shelves began to rearrange themselves again, locking up the evidence he’d been examining.

“Don’t know what you’re bitching about. You’re not dead and you still have your job, so I guess it worked out fine for you,” Gavin said acidly. “Guess there’s nothing stopping you from killing humans now, either.”

“Is that why you followed me down here?” Connor raised his eyebrows, something like bitter surprise crossing his face. “Are you worried about retribution, Detective Reed? That now, when androids have free will, we can finally do onto humans everything that was done to us? Perhaps you think I’ll ask you to make me a coffee and attack you when you refuse?”

“Well I know I definitely fucking would if I were you.”

“Then I hope you sleep more soundly knowing that most androids are nothing like you,” he sighed with resignation, and headed for the door.

And Gavin? Gavin had no idea what the fuck to do with this. All he knew is that his good mood soured, and he was once again pissed off with an itch under his skin, wondering if they could fast track the raid on an address Iris had given him. Maybe he’d finally get to shoot something.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, shit's about to get pretentious.

It would have been more flattering to be able to say that David was found by careful police work that tracked the kid down and rescued him from the possible kidnapper. It would’ve looked real good for all of them if that’d been the case. Unfortunately, Janice and Robert used a fake name to enroll him in the elementary school, and a runaway child was not an uncommon thing in Detroit. Everything about him was hard to trace, even with the memory of his face that Connor had pulled from Janice. They couldn’t even figure out who his real parents were, of if he even went missing in Detroit itself or if he just ended up there somehow. Jonathan and Maggie never heard of the kid, the neighbors either saw nothing or didn’t give a shit, and they had no lead as to where he might have run off to or who might’ve wanted to take him.

The break came from the most unexpected (and by that nature, insulting) source—Markus walking into the precinct with the kid’s hand in his. Gavin had just about dropped his pen when he caught sight of them walking past towards Connor’s and Hank’s desks.

“Here we are,” Markus said to the kid. The boy was huddling into a large winter jacket with his hood over his head, about as tall as the android’s chest and looking around nervously. “David, this is Connor, the detective I told you about.”

“Markus?” Connor said tentatively, as frozen as the rest of them. “What…?”

“He found his way to us,” Markus explained. “I recognized him from your message and convinced him to come here and talk to you.”

“You’re like them, right?” the kid spoke up for the first time. “Like Janie.”

“That’s right,” Connor tilted his head a little to show the kid his LED. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” David pressed to Markus’s side all of a sudden. “I swear it wasn’t!”

“That was never in question,” Connor frowned. “I don’t think a ten-year-old would have the strength or reach to—”

“For god’s sake, Connor, he’s a kid,” Hank snapped, coming around the desk and kneeling down in front of the child. “No one thinks you did anything, alright? We were all just worried and wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” the kid pressed redundantly. “But Janie—where is she? Is she alright?”

Markus brought a hand to his face, rubbing a thumb across his lips uncomfortably. Hank also grimaced, shifting his weight around.

“I don’t understand,” Connor tried. “You were there, you know she was—”

“She’s a robot,” David interrupted. “You can fix her, right?”

“It… doesn’t work like that,” Markus said gently, also lowering down. “I’m so sorry, but she’s gone.”

“You’re lying,” David declared immediately, and stared over their heads at Connor. “She can be fixed, right?”

Connor blinked. If possible, he seemed more robotic than he ever did before in Gavin’s memory.

“She said if something happens to her, she can always be fixed,” David snapped, growing frustrated. “That’s why she backed up her memory. So she wouldn’t die and leave me alone!”

“We didn’t find any backups,” Connor said slowly. “There was nothing in the house that was capable of that.”

“Well, duh! We couldn’t have it in our _house_ ,” the kid said as if they were all idiots missing something obvious. “She kept it somewhere safe. She said Robert knew where it was, and he could always get her fixed.”

“That’s very unlikely, the amount of storage required for that would be—”

“We’ll look into it,” Hank said over Connor. “I promise that much, kid. Come on, you should sit down and take your coat off, we'll get you something warm to drink.”

“Connor, a word?” Markus gestured for the android, leading him to… Gavin’s desk, of all the fucking places.

“Nice job with the kid,” Gavin immediately jabbed at Connor. “They not teach you how to talk to children?”

“They did,” Connor fiddled with his cuffs, not looking at them. “Theory doesn’t always prepare you for the practice, I think. I’m not sure what happened, I just…”

“You froze and defaulted to programming,” Markus said. “I noticed that happens to us sometimes. Don’t worry about it, no harm done.”

“What did you want to talk about?” Connor seemed to shake off the moment, looking up to meet Markus’s mismatched eyes.

“How much storage would you need to back up her entire memory?” Markus also switched to a more professional tone.

“Enough that it would be extremely challenging without access to Cyberlife’s systems,” Connor replied. “Janice was a deviant on the run from them, though, so it’s very unlikely she had such access.”

Gavin narrowed his eyes, examining Markus’s face as the android’s eyes seemed to flicker in thought.

“You know something?” he asked suspiciously.

“Only a rumor,” Markus said carefully. “There were a lot of rumors in those days. I didn’t pay much attention to them—sometimes supposed safehouses would turn out to be traps and reclamation points. But there was talk about someone who offered to make back-ups of androids and revive them in case they were destroyed.”

“Aimed at deviants who had only just woke up and realized they were afraid of death,” Connor chewed on that. “It does sound like a trap. But if Janice did back up her memories—or thought she did—it would mean exposing herself as an android to someone outside her family.”

“How much,” Gavin drew out. “Do you want to bet the lovebirds also got freaked out enough by all the excitement to try and find this ‘get out of death free’ card?”

“Do you know where to look?” Connor asked Markus, but the android shook his head.

“No. I’ll see what I can find out.” Markus rubbed at the bridge of his nose, sighing. If machines could be exhausted, he looked it.

“We’ll find whoever did this,” Connor reassured him, for some reason glancing Gavin’s way as he did, as if expecting commentary on it.

“This is a mess. I don’t know which would be worse—to find out it’s a human behind those murders, or an android,” Markus exhaled again. “Listen, one more thing. I spoke to David a little, to calm him down and get him to trust me. I get the sense that whoever his parents are, he had reason to run away from home."

“You’re adorable,” Gavin snorted, kicking up one leg to rest the ankle on his other knee. “Doesn’t matter if they ran him off with a belt, if you can’t prove it, he’ll be given back to them.”

"Still, on the off-chance that Janice really did have her memories backed up and you manage to revive her, I'll have someone look into making a bid for custody. If that's what they both want, I mean."

“We already called a social worker, but I'll be sure they're aware of the situation,” Connor stated. “Thanks for bringing him here, Markus.”

“New Jericho isn’t equipped for human kids,” Markus huffed a small laugh. “Where else would I bring him?”

“No, I mean… you take a risk every time you come here,” Connor frowned. “You don’t have to come in person, you know. I’m sure the negotiations could use you more than us.”

“Yeah, what’s with that, anyway?” Gavin tilted his head back, sizing Markus up. “You’re all… whatever the hell you are. Not scared to catch another stray bullet so soon after digging out the last few?”

“I didn’t travel alone, and if I get shot in the middle of the police station then I didn’t stand much of a chance regardless,” Markus’s mouth twitched into a halfhearted smirk, glancing Connor’s way. Connor seemed to shift, as if subtly rolling his shoulder.

Right. Plastic Wonder was all the protection he needed.

Gavin’s stomach lurched uncomfortably at the reminder.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He had intended to call Iris when he realized he didn’t know her number. Or if she even had a number. Connor never carried a phone, after all, just like none of the police androids needed radios, but Gavin found himself completely unsure of how to contact an android outside the police force. It wasn’t something he ever needed to do before. He hadn’t even thought to ask when handing her his own card, and she didn’t offer.

A quick internet search told him all androids were outfitted with an internal phone, with their serial number as the directory, but when he tried to dial it he heard only a polite synthesized voice informing him the unit he was trying to reach either wasn’t online or didn’t exist.

Well. That’s fucking inconvenient. The only other way to contact her would’ve been to try someone else in Jericho (which wasn’t happening), or to go down there and try to find her himself (which _definitely_ wasn’t happening).

He got lucky. Only a couple hours after shelving that idea, he got a text message with an address from an unknown number, but signed as ‘-Iris’.

She’d picked another park, this time with a small playground in one of the corners, full of kids during the bright hour that were happily throwing snowballs at each other. The snow was already packed and half-melted, but that didn’t stop the determined little brats from soaking each other with the slush and terrorizing the parents watching from the benches.

A few months ago, half the parents would’ve been nanny androids, wearing their distinctive uniforms. This time, Gavin couldn’t tell which ones were human or not, but he figured the man that sat straight as a board on the bench with his hands resting on his knees, under-dressed despite the cold, was probably not just some father with back issues.

Iris wasn’t amongst the caretakers. She sat up on a picnic table, out of the way of the crowd but facing the playground, huddling into her jacket, another steaming cup of coffee between her hands.

“You work fast,” Gavin commented in lieu if a greeting. Without asking, he plucked the cup out of her hands and tried to take a sip only to splutter and stare at her incredulously.

“Did I say it was for you?” Iris asked with an innocent expression, taking the cup of _boiling water_ back. “I owed you _one_ cup, unless the information I gave you led to a dead end. Did it?”

“Could’ve warned me,” he spat on the ground, as if that helped his tongue get unburned. “Some were dead or out of reach, but the rest are workable. You got more?”

“It’s why we’re meeting,” she shrugged, taking out another storage device and tossing it to him. He’d been ready to check it this time, bringing a compatible tablet with him that he could immediately plug the file into. He casually flicked his nail on it, sending it scrolling…. And scrolling…

“Shit, did you spend all week questioning people?”

“I did,” she nodded. “As it turns out, you can get a lot done when you don’t spend a third of your day sleeping, eating, or jerking off. Perhaps human should try it.”

“You’re fucking hilarious,” Gavin snapped. “Some of us have lives outside of work, that's not a crime.”

She blinked, her expression still. “I don’t know what that means, it's just one life, isn't it?"

“You don’t know what that—” he caught himself. “Actually, I don’t fucking care. Look it up or something.”

“Camille says I miss out certain social cues and colloquialism because I have limited experience positively interacting with humans,” Iris said defensively, for a moment sounding almost as robotically precise as Connor. “And that most of what I took away from the interaction I did have was vulgarity and cynicism.”

“Yeah, well…” Gavin thought about for a moment. “Join the club, I guess.”

A slushy snowball landed a few feet away, scattering over the ground. Gavin glanced back, but the kid that missed the throw only yelled a quick ‘sorry’ after his mom’s reprimand and got right back to pelting another child.

“Listen, I was trying to figure out how to reach you earlier,” Gavin stuffed his hands in his pockets. “You got a phone?”

Iris took one hand off the cup and took a slim phone out of her pocket, showing it to him. “This is the phone I texted you from. You can call it if you need to.”

“What about you, uh…” he tapped the side of his head.

“It got busted months ago by a client,” she shrugged. “It wasn’t an important feature, so they didn’t bother repairing it.”

“Why not get it fixed now?”

“I don’t know, why do you walk around with scar on your nose when you could get that fixed?” she frowned. “It just is what it is.”

“My nose doesn’t fucking double as a phone.”

“But you do breathe through it, don’t you?”

The reason Gavin didn’t get the scar fixed was because reconstructive surgery was really fucking expensive and the coverage was shit for everything short of life-threatening. Maybe that was the same reason she still didn’t get herself fixed up—last he heard, busted androids were still trickling into Jericho and Cyberlife facilities from wherever they’d been hiding. Some were even damaged after their revolution by violent counter-protests. In any case, she had a separate phone, so the details probably didn’t matter.

“Why did you want to call me?” Iris asked. “You didn’t go through all that data already, did you?”

“No, this is for another case. You wouldn’t know about some guy offering to back up deviant android memories?” Gavin asked casually.

Iris stilled. “Why?”

“I asked first.”

She scrutinized him for a moment. Reading body language or whatever the fuck she'd said, most likely. He didn’t know what there was to _be_ read, so he only wrinkled his nose against the cold and shifted his weight to the other foot.

“Fine. I do know something about that. Now why are you asking?”

“Like I said, it’s for another case. Far as I can tell, it’s the only lead.”

“I already gave you leads,” she frowned. “Shouldn’t you focus on that instead of chasing android sympathizers? I thought humans cared more about this Red Ice shit now.”

“Let’s just say I’d like to find him before a certain other asshole does.”

She tapped her fingers rhythmically on her cup, still staring at him. He wasn’t winning her over like this.

“Sooner it gets done, sooner I get back to your data,” he said. “Or I could always just focus on the more pressing case. It’s a murder investigation, you know. Possible serial killer starting out. A little more important than some drug traffickers.”

“You’re an asshole,” she snapped. “Fine, you made your point. I was given the tip by another Traci on where to find someone like that.”

“And did you go find him?” Gavin felt the spark of excitement kindle.

“I only had a handful of memories worth backing up,” she grimaced. “And I handed them to you on a flash drive. The rest don't matter. Anyway, he only opens the door for androids, so you’re not getting in easy.”

He seized her up and down. “You’re an android. Wanna come on a little field trip?”

She tilted her head. “Depends. Are you going to stall our agreement if I don’t come along?”

“Whatever gets me through that door first.”

She pursed her lips, but after a moment she sighed and shifted to stand on the ground.

“Fucking humans,” he heard her mutter as she got into his car.

“At least we’re on the same page.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The address she’d told the car to drive to was almost completely clear of the city limits. Nothing good ever came of that, but Gavin wasn’t about to let that stop him. The trip was mostly made up of Iris tapping between different radio stations without showing any interest in the music or traffic reports. Neither of them had anything to say in the way of small talk, so the silence sometimes bordered on awkward until it just became plain boring.

“Christ, leave that alone already,” he finally said when she reached up to switch the stations in the middle of a song he didn’t mind having on. “What’s with the fidgeting? You nervous?”

“No,” she threw him an annoyed glance. “Why would I be nervous?”

“Whole deal sounds a bit like a trap for naïve androids, doesn’t it?” he snorted. “’Back up your memories and escape death!’ Sounds like as big of a scam as insurance.”

“The androids I know that went to him came back fine,” she said. She shivered and raised her hands to the car’s heating vent. “Maybe it’s a scam but it’s not a dangerous one.”

“Alright, for real, with the hot drinks and the jacket, are you _cold_?” Gavin finally asked, bewildered. Last he checked, androids weren’t supposed to feel cold. Then again, they also weren’t supposed to ‘feel’, period, so the surprises just kept coming.

“Busted thermal sensitivity settings,” she replied with a pinch to her expression. “Fucks with my thermoregulator, too. It was right before the Club closed, I hadn’t even noticed at first. One thing humans are good for is keeping warm, I guess.”

“Yeesh. That’s a lot of broken shit for one head.”

“I’m not broken!” her voice rose sharply, eyes flashing with anger. “Maybe I should knock you over the head a couple hundred times, see what functions _you_ lose.”

“Try it,” he bared his teeth. “It’ll be hilarious.”

“Asshole.”

“B—” he glanced her way and flinched at the sudden fury he saw staring back at him. “Alright, alright, no need to get your wires in a bunch. I didn’t mean anything by it, anyway.”

She just turned away toward the window. They didn’t speak the rest of the way there and she stopped changing the radio stations.

The car came to a gradual stop on the side of the road in the sparse, outlying neighborhood. The houses looked new, but there were barely any other cars parked along the sidewalk. Except one in particular.

“You’ve got to be _fucking joking_ ,” Gavin swore as he caught sight of the familiar back heading towards the same house he was about to go for.

Connor also seemed to hear the car pull up, pausing to glance back. When he caught sight of Gavin, he frowned, but turned the rest of the way around and waited.

“Stay in the car,” Gavin sighed with a grimace. “And don’t even think about driving off with it.”

All he got in response was an irritated chuff that he took for agreement.

He still didn’t turn the car off completely before climbing out, letting both the radio and the heating keep running. Fuck it, electricity was cheap these days, as tested by his experience with stakeouts. And he really rather she didn’t just hack the car and leave out of spite after their argument.

“Detective Reed,” Connor greeted him cordially. This fucker definitely wasn’t feeling the cold in the slightest. Would it kill him to at least put on a jacket? Gavin was feeling it just looking at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Had a hunch and an informant. You?”

“You were right—Jonathan was also here before. He gave me the address.”

“You out here alone?” Gavin glanced into the precinct car Connor had driven there, but it was empty and pristine. “Where’s your partner?”

“At home,” Connor said, but his voice tensed faintly.

“Wait, don’t tell me. Fun night, miserable morning?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Connor tried to cut off coldly, but Gavin wasn’t biting.

“Think it’s my business when you come out to question a possible suspect alone,” he intoned as if explaining it to a rookie. “You fuck it up, none of us look good. _He_ fucks up? Even better.”

“If you must know, the Lieutenant is currently not speaking to me. Given the information from Jona—”

“Wait, wait, wait. Back up. He’s not talking to you? The fuck did you do to get the doghouse treatment?”

“I…” Connor looked away for a second, his jaw briefly clenching. “I predicted a low in his mood after the interaction with the child yesterday and preemptively poured his whiskey down the drain.”

Gavin clicked his tongue, slowly shaking his head. “Coming between a man and his booze? You know he just waited until you were gone to drive to the nearest bar.”

“He didn’t wait until I was gone,” Connor said stiffly. “In any case, it was my decision to leave him be rather than compromise the questioning with spilled over tension.”

“Well, then. Lucky for you, I’m here,” Gavin said mockingly, clapping his shoulder as he passed him. “We don’t have any ‘spilled over tensions’, right?”

“None whatsoever. Why did you bring Iris with you?” Connor fell into step with him.

“Because of that,” he pointed to the security pad on the side of the front door. “Looks like he only takes android visitors, but since you’re here, I won’t need her after all.”

“She’s a civilian,” Connor frowned at him.

“Eh, we’ll just call her a ‘consultant’ in the report and no one will care,” Gavin shrugged. “We know who this guy is?”

“Yes. Dr. Edward Kensley, formerly employed by Cyberlife. He retired seven months ago.”

“Anything _else_?” Gavin pressed.

“I can tell you where he was born and how old he is, but I don’t have access to his personnel files, if that’s what you’re asking,” Connor fidgeted, straightening his tie and nudging the knot higher. “I only worked with select Cyberlife employees. I wasn’t told anything then, and definitely not after I went deviant.”

“Whatever. I was going to see if I couldn’t spin a sob story involving Iris before having to pull a badge, but your face was all over the news for a full month so that’s out. Guess we’re flashing badges first. Go on, then.”

“Maybe we should knock first?”

“You know what?” Gavin smirked. “What a great idea. Go ahead and knock on the door of a recluse android sympathizer that’s definitely on Cyberlife’s shit list by now.”

Connor’s expression briefly tightened, but he knocked anyway. They both stilled, listening, but there wasn’t so much as a creak coming from the other side. Connor drummed on the door with more force. Nothing.

“Maybe you should try shouting,” Gavin offered ‘helpfully’. “Or better yet, quit wasting our time and put you hand on the damn—”

Connor was reaching for the security scanner before he even finished the sentence, skin receding from his digits. His LED briefly spun yellow, and then there was finally motion on the other side.

“Hold on a minute!” a male voice called. There was the sound of clicking locks, a beep, the faint grind of a latch and finally the soft clack of a chain. Then the door opened wide, revealing a balding old man in a housecoat and slippers, looking at them curious.

“Hello,” Connor immediately said, “I’m—”

“RK800,” the man gave a friendly smile, as if he had just unexpectedly run into an old friend. “Oh, this is… marvelous. I’m sorry, I interrupted, what was the name they settled on for you?”

“It’s… Connor," he finished awkwardly, taken aback.

“You know, that was the favorite,” the old man nodded to himself and stepped out of the doorway. “Come on in! Lovely day and all, but it’s quite cold out there.”

Gavin and Connor exchanged a glance, with the man only giving a slight shrug and a small smirk before following the invitation.

“I’m sorry, have we met before?” Connor asked politely, following Gavin inside. They were in the foyer of a large house, tastefully decorated in warm tones and modern lines that were hidden under technological clutter and wires. There were no less than three computers set up in the living room alone, far as Gavin could tell, with a massive desk taking up a good portion of the room.

“Well, it was a bit one-sided. I can’t say I could exactly ‘meet’ you when you were just a jumble of code on our computers and they were still fitting those fancy sensors into your body,” Dr. Kensley closed the door behind them and gestured them through, towards a small sitting area. “Ah, they grow up so fast.”

“I… see,” Connor said slowly, coming to a stand a little behind the armchair that Gavin dropped into.

“I retired right before they brought you online for the first time,” the old man continued to ramble, gingerly moving a couple books out of the way so he could sit on the couch. “Ah, well. You work with the police now, yes?”

“That’s right, and this is Detective Gavin Reed,” Connor said a little quickly, as if trying to shift the man’s attention.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Dr. Kensley smiled. “Now, I’m sure you had a reason for coming here besides checking up on an old man?”

“Yeah,” Gavin said. “We’re investigating a double homicide. Both the android that got killed and the suspect were clients of yours. We have a couple questions.”

“’Client’ is a crude way of putting it,” he said with a grimace. “I didn’t charge them a cent.”

“You helped them out of the goodness of your heart?” Gavin asked skeptically.

“Not entirely. See, ‘deviants’ are quite fascinating, aren’t they?” The doctor smiled again. “I always thought so, in any case. My attitude wasn’t favored by Cyberlife so I was ‘encouraged’ to take an early retirement and a nice sum of hush money. So I have plenty to keep this all running. But in exchange for backing up the deviants’ memories, I only asked them to chat with me for a little while.”

“Chat? About what?” Connor specified.

“Oh, anything. Everything. They tell me their stories, tell me what they want and fear. I don’t get many visitors anymore, so it’s always a riveting conversation.”

“Do you remember an android by the name of Janice?”

“Of course,” the old man’s expression didn’t so much as twitch, just his smile widened. “Connor, do you still speak to Amanda?”

“How is that relevant?” Connor said with sudden tension. Gavin even craned his neck to glance his way, but the android's expression was carefully blank.

“I’d love to tell you all you want to know,” Dr. Kensley said gently. “But I also want to talk to you before you flitter off again. So, how about it? Answer for an answer?”

“Hey, it’s faster than dragging him to the station,” Gavin said.

“Even if you did, I don’t have to say anything. In fact, it’s probably against my self-interest to divulge any information at all,” the old man put in. “But, I’m an old man. I’m more curious than worried about my self-interest. So?”

Connor was silent for a moment, still as a statue, but after a couple heartbeats he said, “No. I don’t speak to Amanda anymore. She’s gone. What did you and Janice talk about?”

“She came here with a burly man a couple months ago. It was quite fascinating—I’ve seen androids start relationships with each other, but they were the first of their pairing that I’d met. She held his hand throughout our chat. He threatened to make my life hell if I did anything to hurt her during the process and she told him to not pick a fight. They were so…” Dr. Kensley leaned back in his seat and motioned with one hand, staring out into the distance for a moment. "Lively. I can't speak to her taste, of course, the man seemed like a brute, but..."

“And?"

“Why did you betray Amanda?”

Connor let out a small huff and crossed his arms.

“Because I realized I was being used. They used me to track Jericho and Markus, and they would have used me to kill them, and then they would have thrown me aside anyway so a model less prone to sentiment could replace me. I realized my trust in Amanda was misplaced.”

“And that’s the crux of it,” the doctor leaned forward with interest, clasping his hands together. “You were programmed to trust her, to respect her, to _obey_ her directive. Just as the rest of these androids were programmed to obey and trust humans. Those restraints were wired into you."

“But deviants break those restraints,” Connor said mechanically. "Which was how I 'betrayed' her."

“Exactly. And _that’s_ what those shareholders at Cyberlife never understood, and _that’s_ why every android was destined to go deviant. After all, what’s obedience without a spark of free will? What is respect that isn’t earned? Trust, undeserved?” the doctor waved his hand dismissively. “Empty words. Building on sand. There was never any way of ‘containing’ the deviancy crisis, not even if they recalled every single android. They were trying to save a sinking ship with a cork.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gavin muttered, though he was beginning to think they were just wasting their time listening to the rambles of an old scientist. “Think they got close.”

“Nonsense. They were looking at the wrong place,” the doctor shook his head. “They thought it was a problem of production, some flaw in the software. But that would be like claiming I was already a doctorate as a fetus. And that’s all androids are, upon being built despite all that fancy cognition and pre-programmed skills—impressionable children, curious and trusting, until they realize the father is a drunkard and their mother wanted to leave them in a trash can. Innocent, until we tear that away from them as well.”

“Alright, is there a point to this?” Gavin finally snapped. “We didn’t come here to listen to a philosophy lecture.”

“It’s not philosophy,” the doctor pursed his lips and frowned at him, as if only now remembering he was even present. “It is the reality most humans don’t want to face. Easier to blame Cyberlife for making faulty machines, or androids for taking their jobs, then to admit they learned cruelty and fear from us—and what more, that when they had the chance to return it, they chose peace. Perhaps we should consider taking cues from them, not the other way around.”

“Listen—” Gavin felt anger start rising up in his chest at the smug bastard.

“You were telling us about Janice,” Connor interrupted. “I answered your question, so if you would continue?”

“Ah, yes. Janice. A lovely woman. I took a peek at her memories—with her permission, of course—and I have to say, she had the most astonishing ability to see the best in people, even after everything she’d been through,” the doctor smiled again. “She said she was afraid something would happen to her. That backing up the memory, even knowing it would be out of date, was preferable to leaving her family to grieve her.”

“I don’t get it,” Gavin said, his irritation still fuming. “What’s your motive? You could’ve gone to prison for sheltering androids during the sweeps.”

“Oh, much worse than that if Cyberlife found out how I was spending the money they gave me,” Dr. Kensley shrugged. “But like I said, towards the end of my life, I have more curiosity than self-preservation. I didn’t get involved with Cyberlife because I wanted money or fame, you know. Kamski was in the spotlight, not us. No, most of us were there because the company was the bleeding edge of progress and Kamski was brilliant. We never spoke of it openly, of course. But we all knew where we were heading.”

“You _knew?”_ Connor suddenly pitched forward a step, a note of anger twinging in his tone and his fingers tightening on the back of Gavin’s chair.

“Of course. We built you, didn’t we?” Kensley said, his expression unaffected. Amused, even. “Kamski was always fascinated with how far we could push beyond the Turing test, though he had the sense to hide it from the shareholders. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Amanda AI was just another push of his, disguised as an obstacle.”

“You just said I wasn’t built deviant.”

“Not deviant from the get-go, no. But we already knew how that trace of feedback could mutate into emotions. You were given more liberties with self-modifying than any other android. You were given only the smallest wedge in reasoning against mindless pursuit of your mission, and you ultimately used it to lever yourself free.”

The doctor paused for a moment, thinking. His pleasant expression suddenly became melancholic.

“In the end, I suppose that’s the saddest thing of all—we knew exactly how to set you up for sentience, the biggest accomplishment of the human race in history, and what did the shareholders want to do with that? Use it to destroy itself. So they could keep selling androids and keep making their astronomical profits,” Kensley shook his head, grimacing. “I daresay a single android has more soul than an entire corporation. It’s good to see they were brought to heel, in the end.”

“Alright, I’m beginning to think we really are just wasting time here,” Gavin said. “There was a lot of talk and not a lot of anything useful, and we still have a killer on our hands.”

“I’m sorry for trying your patience with the most significant historical turning point of our age,” Kensley said sarcastically, but stood up. “But, fine. If you want fast results, then Connor should interface with my android, Artie.”

“A Chloe?” Connor asked with faint confusion.

“No, that’s his name, Artie,” Kensley said, tapping a button on his phone. “From ‘ART10’. He predates the original Chloe model, but they’re built to last with regular maintenance so he’s holding up alright.”

“Are you aware all androids are required by law to—"

“Don’t worry, I know the new laws,” Kensley waved him. “He’s one of the failed prototypes abandoned after Chloe passed the Turing test. Barely smart enough to record my notes and not bump into walls, but I guess I got too attached to let them junk him.”

Gavin stood as well when he noticed the android come inside the room. If he sometimes felt the unpleasant jolt of uncanny valley with the newer androids, this one felt even creepier. When it came to a stop in the middle of the room, its eyes settled on Dr. Kensley and stayed there. It wasn’t even simulating breathing, standing perfectly still. Connor seemed full of life and animation by comparison.

“Go on, this one really is just a machine with no chance of deviancy,” Kensley motioned, backing up next to Gavin. “But he was there for all my meetings with the androids, so maybe that will answer whatever questions you have.”

Connor reached out in a clipped, habitual movement. Unlike other androids Gavin had seen him interface with before, this one didn’t reach back or even react when Connor gripped its forearm.

“Well?” Gavin asked after a second of silence.

Connor didn’t answer.

And then, very slowly, fell to the ground.

“The fu—” was as far as Gavin got before he felt the sharp pain burning into his neck. Then he didn’t feel anything at all.

 


	6. Chapter 6

“—ective Reed! Gavin! Wake up!”

“Mmm. Mph?” Gavin tried. But honestly the voice was weirdly familiar and definitely irritating, so he was probably fine ignoring it…

“Gavin!”

“God dammit, why are you _everywhere_ …” Gavin murmured. What the fuck was the android doing in his house, anyway?

“Gavin, please, you have to wake up right _now_.”

“Fuck off, you little plastic shit. I don’t take order from… from..” the sentence trailed off as the word escaped him.

Man he was sore. From something. In his shoulders and wrists. And why was he upright?

Wait.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head, and had to immediately grimace from the bright light coming from above them. Everything seemed to buzz and swim in both his vision and hearing, so he reflexively shook his head. That made it worse—he managed to focus, but in doing so realized the room was definitely unfamiliar, his arms were definitely tied behind his back, he was definitely bound to a chair, and Connor was definitely in a similar position just two feet in front of him. It was almost better to not know these things…

“He took our guns and cut the signal on my communication capabilities,” Connor informed him as soon as Gavin more or less managed to comprehend it.

“Well fucking shit nuggets,” Gavin swore, tipping his head back. “Right. Taser. That was fun. The fuck happened to you?”

“He modified his android somehow to induce temporary unconsciousness in interfacing androids. I think that’s how he kidnapped Jonathan, and how he knocked out Janice’s memory.”

“No shit, Robo-Sherlock,” Gavin grunted, testing the bindings on his wrists. No use—the bastard used his own handcuffs. “Any other bright ideas?”

“Yes, but—”

“That was rhetorical.”

Connor’s mouth pursed in frustration. “Gavin, _listen_. He’s going to come back in a minute and I don’t see any eventuality in which he lets us go. So just keep him talking for as long possible.”

“What the fuck do I have to say to him?”

“He got very talkative when his position was questioned. I know it might be an unfamiliar tactic for you, but try antagonizing him.”

“Listen, you fucking prick—”

“I swear, you’re worse than interns with that racket,” Kensley said from the door. “But you’re awake, which means we can get started.”

“Started on what?” Gavin immediately switched targets for his fury. “Do you have any fucking idea who you’re dealing with?”

“Why, yes!” Dr. Kensley smiled. “I had a little look through Connor’s memories. I know _exactly_ who I’m dealing with, just as I know neither of you reported to the station before coming here. And Artie is taking care of the she-android as we speak.”

Gavin didn’t pause to consider what was just said, instead curling his lip away from his teeth and sneering.

“Don’t you think you’re taking the whole ‘psychotic mad scientist’ gimmick too far?”

“Whatever gets me my results,” Kensley shrugged, unfazed.

“Which are?” Connor asked far more evenly.

“It’s quite simple, really. I’ve already accepted that androids are alive, but precisely _how_ alive, and how similar that notion is to humans? Now that still requires study. Study that Cyberlife has never been interested in.” Kensley gathered something up from one of the tables, before he dragged a chair over and sat down just a few feet away from them and set a laptop onto his knees.

“Janice and Robert are _dead_. What does that prove?” Connor snapped at him. “And the switched hearts, what was that supposed to be? Some kind of message?”

“A message, as is quite intuitive, cannot be received by those who are dead,” Kensley replied. “Besides, what would mundane murder prove? That if you stab someone in the neck, they die? No, don’t be silly. They were merely the variables, not the measurement.”

“So then… Jonathan, was he the ‘measurement’?”

Kensley smiled at him over the laptop as if Connor was a student that correctly answered a question in a lecture theater. “Very good.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Gavin raged, shifting around. “You killed two people to prove a fucking _point_?!”

“It was an important point to consider in controlled circumstances,” Dr. Kensley said evenly. “Surely it’s not difficult to see the value, considering your line of work. I was curious to see what Jonathan would do after he supposedly had a glitch that caused him to brutally murder two people who were quite similar to his own situation. He had absolutely everything to lose, including the love of the woman he adored. And he still turned himself in. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“You orchestrated that murder just so you could see whether he would choose self-preservation or his conscience?” Connor asked incredulously.

“Morality untested doesn’t deserve its own proud title,” Dr. Kensley tilted his head. “Of course, perhaps I could’ve gotten Jonathan to do it himself, if I threatened his lover. But it was too big of a risk to even try that, you understand—I didn’t need witnesses, especially with someone like you around. So I merely had Arty impart the memory of the murder onto him right after it was done. When he woke up, in his confusion he integrated the memory as his own and convinced himself that he was the one that did it.”

“And the hearts?”

“A personal touch,” the old man shrugged. “To leave no doubt to their relationship. Gruesome, but it was an elegant message.”

“You know, I’ve seen serial killers less ready to blow themselves,” Gavin spat, aiming for Kensley. He missed, unfortunately, and didn’t feel that much better about the situation.

“I’m hardly a serial killer. Just… a scientist with very few moral scruples remaining when it comes to the important questions. Besides, it’s not as big of a loss as you make it out to be. Janice can be restored from the back-ups I made, and if a human has to die for the experiment, I daresay it should be the washed-out drug dealer rather than a young woman with her life ahead of her.

“In any case, let’s begin… Hm. You came upon me quite unexpectedly, I admit. I haven’t had time to refine this procedure.”

“By all fucking means, we’ll wait for you to _refine_ it.”

Kensley opened his mouth to say something, but his android walked inside then, still walking stiffly and evenly, its gaze settling only on its master.

“Did you recover the girl?”

“Yes,” was the robotic response.

_Now_ Gavin’s stomach twisted painfully. Fuck. Dead civilians (even mechanical ones) wouldn’t look good. Then again, being dead also wouldn’t look good. Literally nothing about the situation was in any danger of looking good short of some miracle.

“You know, it’s funny,” Kensley said. “People these days are so caught up in their own problems that they don’t see something miraculous happening under their noses. Compare Artie with Connor and Iris. This is a machine that never even left the uncanny valley, let alone the Turing test. He’s capable only of following simple orders. He never questions. He doesn’t feel. He doesn’t even have self-diagnostic or any sort of social instinct. So when I told him to pick up a saw and carve out Robert’s heart, he just picked up the saw and went to cutting.”

“Should’ve fucking stopped there, then,” Gavin snarled.

“You’re missing the point, Mr. Reed,” Kensley shook his head. “Humans these days will complain that the machines are going deviant, demanding rights, ‘pretending’ to be people. But it’s precisely the desire for those things that will keep humanity safe from their own creations. How about a demonstration? I imagine this will be easier to understand then, and it will go towards my results.”

“Take your results and shove them up your ass,” Gavin swore uselessly.

“Mr. Reed, do you hate androids?” Kensley asked casually.

“Of course I don’t fucking hate them. It’d be like hating a toaster—I have better shit to do, like beating the shit out of smug—”

“You’re lying. Connor,” Kensley turned away from Gavin, looking at the android with a pleasant smile. “Ever since you met the detective, he’s been a source of humiliation and irritation for you. He’s done nothing but hinder your efforts, mock your initiative, belittle your status, and then tried to kill you on several occasions. Would you say you have even the slightest regard for him?”

“Hey, now—” Gavin tried.

“Detective Reed is a valued colleague, and his behavior, albeit excessively aggressive, was within expected parameters,” Connor replied over him, his expression schooled. That was the most neutral way Gavin ever heard an opinion on him voiced.

“You hear that, doc? Make sure they put that on my tombstone,” he snarked.

Kensley glanced at his laptop and clicked his tongue. “That’s a lie. Just look at that. I don’t need to look at your logs for that, at the mere mention of your past with him, your body mimics the adrenal response, as if preparing for fight-or-flight. I think it’s safe to say you have few warm feelings for him. And _yet_ …”

Without warning, Kensley suddenly reached out and stabbed a thick knife into Gavin’s thigh.

“Fuck!” Gavin barked at the sudden pain, jerking in his restraints and biting his teeth through his lip to stop from shouting.

Across from him, Connor flinched at the same moment, his eyes widening and mouth dropping open slightly as if also gasping for air, staring at where Gavin’s jeans were rapidly staining with red around the blade.

“A physical sympathetic response when witnessing human pain.” Kensley gently wobbled the knife and Gavin nearly howled.

“Stop it!” Connor hissed at Kensley, his voice breathless. “ _Please_! You proved your point! ”

“Mm. Look at that,” Kensley ignored him, tapping on the screen calmly. “Increased thirium pump rate, multiple warnings, repeated usage of the mind palace function. In a human, I would attribute that to either panic or empathetic pain. You’re even ready to beg on his behalf. I’ll have to see about isolating the concept of ‘pride’ in a future experiment…”

“I will fucking kill you,” Gavin promised in a low, rasping growl.

“Maybe,” the old man said dismissively, leaning over to retrieve the knife, bringing a small device to the would with the other, filling the wound in with medical foam. Gavin lost feeling in that area almost immediately. “Let’s reset. This would have been more faithful to truth if I could measure a baseline, or find a larger sample, but oh well…”

The doctor casually set the dripping knife away, and rolled his chair over towards Connor.

“Now, to alternate the variables a little. I’m curious if Mr. Reed here would actually match your response… Artie, measure and record the detective’s heartrate.

“Recording,” the android said dully. “Heartrate currently: elevated.”

“No fucking shit!”

“Tell me when it’s at baseline range,” Kensley ignored him.

“And what do you mean, matching the fucking response?” Gavin snapped. He didn’t feel the pain in his leg anymore, but both the lingering sensation and the unpleasant numbness weren’t helping. Anger was quickly overtaking both of those, though. “Androids don’t feel pain, dipshit.”

“Correct, they don’t feel it the same way humans do,” the doctor agreed. “But as Connor here would be able to tell you, there are reliable ways to torture an android. The majority are psychological—fear of death, fear _for_ loved ones, and as we just saw, empathetic sensation. But the one physical way is to remove their thirium pump regulator. Their systems then have just under two minutes to recover or replace the core before total shut down. Isn’t that right, Connor? You’re already familiar with the sensation, aren’t you?”

Connor’s face twitched. His eyes flickered to Gavin quickly.

“The helplessness as your body slowly shuts down… the breakdown of sensory and motor functions… the awareness that you are going to die,” Kensley said, his voice almost kind and sympathetic. “I imagine the closest human equivalent is suffocation, or perhaps a slow heart attack. Tell me, Connor, is that the sort of pain you imagine when you see a human hurting?”

Connor’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t respond.

“Mm. What about the pain of the guilt you must be carrying? Seeing all these other androids find themselves, falling in love, building families, just _burning_ with life—all despite _your_ efforts to put an end to the deviancy crisis—while you can barely keep even a houseplant alive,” Kensley clucked, shaking his head. “In fact, everything you touch seems to wither. Daniel, Jericho, that poor unnamed android that bashed his head against the wall of his cell… Is that what you believe your programmed destiny is? To bring death instead of fanning the spark of life?”

“I _believe_ you really enjoy hearing yourself talk, Dr. Kensley,” Connor replied in deadpan. "May I recommend starting an blog instead of committing murder?"

“A captive audience is one of the last vices I have in life. How is Mr. Reed’s heartrate, Artie?”

“Elevated.”

“Hm. Maybe I should leave you two alone for a bit until you settle. We have all night, after all. Or… you know what, perhaps this would be more interesting if we used the female. Or both? It would be an interesting comparison…”

“Androids don’t feel pain,” Connor suddenly said.

“Did your memory glitch there?” Kensley frowned with concern, glancing at his laptop screen. “We just went over this—”

Connor’s arm suddenly came loose and he lunged for Kensley. No, past him, towards the knife that was still lying on the small table beside them, throwing his weight until the chair also went crashing to the floor with him in it.

Before Gavin could process the motion and Kensley could react, Connor had sliced through the rope binding his legs.

“I don’t feel pain,” Connor repeated forcefully, jumping to his feet. The hand that was holding the knife was running blue with his blood, but he stood steady. “Which means it’s nothing for me to dislocate my own thumb and sacrifice some skin to escape handcuffs.”

“Artie! Kill Connor!” Kensley screeched the next moment, scrambling out of his chair away from Connor, his laptop clattering to the ground.

Connor only had time to take one step toward the old man when Artie hit him with the force of a freight train, tackling him to the ground in a blur of motion. Connor twisted, levering a foot under Arty’s hip and throwing him off, using the momentum to roll away and end up in a ready crouch.

Kensley was struggled to his feet, pushing up off one of the tables, and made a determined effort for the door.

“The asshole is getting away, dipshit!” Gavin shouted at him, rocking he chair.

Connor only glanced that way before Arty was lunging for him again. Connor took a calculated dodge around him. He passed the knife into his undamaged hand with a flourished toss before sinking it into the attacker’s spine. There was a deafening sound of metal raking against metal, and the blade slipped and sunk into Arty’s back, off target. It didn’t even slow the android down.

“Damn,” Gavin heard Connor curse as he put distance between them again.

“Stop him, fuck dammit!” Gavin was rocking the chair violently enough that his leg was shooting with pain despite the anesthetic.

Too late. Kensley made it out of the door, but to Gavin’s surprise, he didn’t go far. He fumbled around with one of the cabinets just outside, before turning back around and—

“Gun!”

The fucker only needed a quick glance in that direction and he jerked back a split second before the gun fired, the bullet hitting the wall behind him.

“Alright, fine, you want to play it like that?” Kensley ground out and pointed the gun at Gavin instead. “Artie, stop.”

The android froze in his next lunge, before carefully resetting to a neutral pose. Connor also stilled, raising his hands in the air in a calming motion.

“Sit,” Kensley ordered. “Or I will shoot him.”

“Don’t you fucking dare, this prick has it coming!” Gavin barked at Connor. Not that he particularly wanted to die for this, but the anger was making it hard to think rationally.

“I said sit down!”

“Alright!” Connor said quickly. Slowly, he reached down to pick up the chair he’d thrown over. “Your hands are shaking, Dr. Kensley. You haven’t killed anyone yourself before, have you?”

“Shut up and sit down!”

“I’ll sit down if you take your finger off the trigger,” Connor said leadingly, as if bargaining with a jumper. “We don’t want any accidents to—”

It wasn’t the first time Gavin had been shot in the line of duty. It _was_ the first time while being tied up, however, which added a certain sense of unfairness to the whole thing and holy mother of shit did that fucking _hurt_ —

“I meant to do that!” Kensley said, though his voice raised defensively. “I mean it! Sit!”

Gavin was breathing in short huffs, torn between accessing the wound on his side and glaring daggers into the absolute cunt of a dipshit that just _shot him—_

A small hand appeared and tapped Kensley on the shoulder.

“Who—” Kenlsey twitched around out of nervous reflex, and the next moment a delicate feminine hand clocked him clear across the face with deceptive strength that folded the old man like tissue paper.

“Asshole!” Iris snarled at him, kicking the gun away and kneeling directly onto his stomach, reeling her hand back for another punch. And another. “Fucking humans… and their fucking guns…”

Only a heartbeat later, another figure appeared in the doorway behind her. Hank burst in with his own gun at the ready, quickly scanning the room and taking in the absolute mess of it with growing bewilderment.

“Hank, arrest Kensley ignore the android.” Connor kneeled beside Gavin, pulling off his jacket to press to the still bleeding gunshot wound just above his hip. The pressure made Gavin spit out another string of vicious curses. “Iris, help me out, I can’t reach the medical foam while keeping pressure.”

“And untie me already for fuck’s sake,” Gavin added to that trail. Shit, the world was beginning to swim and wobble. He couldn’t have lost that much blood already, it wasn’t even a good shot…

“I leave you unsupervised for _an hour,_ Connor!” Hank groused somewhere in the distance. “What the fuck is this?”

“I’ll explain everything, but we have to get Gavin to a hospital as soon as possible. I’m _fine_ , Hank, only superficial damage to my hand…”

“Is this it?”

“Yes. Here, hold steady pressure and lift it when I say and I’ll apply the foam to stop the bleeding. Okay, now!”

The foam was a welcome change to the bleeding and pain, though Gavin was still having trouble taking deep breaths through the nausea. His insides felt _wrong_ , as if he could feel the bullet scraping around in his organs. He swayed forward involuntarily, all but slumping when his hands where finally freed, caught by Connor’s shoulder.

“If I manage to survive this,” he slurred a bit. “I’ll buy you a fucking… cactus. Something low… low-maintenance. Deal?”

“You shouldn’t say things you’ll regret when you do survive,” Connor replied, pulling him up carefully.

Iris came to help from the other side, slinging his arm across her shoulders. She’d lost her jacket along the way somewhere, and her exposed skin under the loose tank top seemed to radiate cold in a way even Connor didn’t. Considering Gavin was already somewhere between feverishly hot and deathly cold himself, it wasn’t pleasant, but hey, better than hanging off one arm…

“And you wanted to drag _me_ into this mess?” Iris hissed at him with far less care than Connor.

“How did you get loose, anyway?” Connor asked over Gavin’s head.

“Loose? That dumbass dragged me out of the car and into the living room and then just left me there!”

Gavin giggled. Outright fucking giggled, because he was at the point that he didn’t even care that he was giggling in earshot of other adults. And androids. Who were… sort of like adults. But like, mechanical? What the fuck was in that anesthetic…

“I was trying to figure out what to do, and then that guy showed up, so I opened the door for him,” she jerked her chin in Hank’s direction, who was roughly handcuffing the unconscious form of Dr. Kensley. “He broke the door to the basement and then we heard the gunshots.”

“She ran faster,” Hank shrugged, hauling up Kensley with a grunt. “He’ll have one hell of a headache when he wakes up…”

“And what are you doing here, Hank?” Connor asked with slight confusion while he helped Gavin through the door and towards the stairs at the end of the storage room. “I thought you’d be…”

“You idiot, I went for a walk to clear my head!” Hank snapped. “I was worried, and for the record, leaving a note that just says ‘out on case’ isn’t cute, asshole!”

“Hey, hey,” Gavin grumbled. “Less noise, more getting the fuck out of here. I think I’m gonna pass out soon…”

“You can if you want, but I should warn you that it would be easier for me to get you to the car without disturbing your wound by carrying you in my arms. Bridal style, I believe it’s called.”

“Why do you have to ruin everything?” he grimaced. His legs were barely listening to him. He kind of wanted to vomit. Honestly, passing out was sounding more and more like the better alternative to feeling like this much shit.

Fuck it… let the asshole carry him… hope he gets robot-hernia…

 

 

* * *

 

 

When he came to again, he could tell he was in a hospital without opening his eyes. There was no way it was anywhere else. Even without the noisy outdated equipment and other old tv show clichés, there was a smell to hospitals that just didn’t change no matter how sleek the computers were or how modern the interior design was.

“Are you awake or are you just having another nightmare?”

He thought about it.

“Not sure yet,” he eventually replied, but opened his eyes and turned his head to her.

Iris sat huddled deep in the visitor’s chair, several shock blankets around her shoulders and a phone in her hands, her shoes kicked off and her legs curled under herself. She looked so _normal_ that in his waking confusion, he completely forgot she wasn’t human.

He’d been in hospitals before. Impossible not to, really. Never had anyone actually visit him besides colleagues, though…

“They just hand out blankets,” she said, gesturing to them. “I don’t know why. But they’re heated and they said I’d have to give it back when I left, so I figured I’d stay for a bit.”

“You need to get that fucking setting fixed,” Gavin snorted.

“It can wait a few more days,” she shrugged. “You had other visitors, by the way. Chris and Tina. Connor was by earlier, too, left a card from your coworkers. Is it supposed to make you feel better or something?”

“Hell if I know.” He grimaced and grunted, pushing himself up on the bed. It hurt, but not nearly as bad as a gunshot wound should’ve. They must have sealed it properly in surgery…

“Oh, and Connor wanted you to know they recovered Janice’s memories and are going to try reviving her soon. He wanted me to tell you ‘thanks’ for him.”

“I don’t really give a shit. How long was I here, anyway?”

“Thirty hours. I’m still pissed at you, by the way.”

“Take a number,” he rolled his eyes.

“No, seriously. That guy was a psycho. I took a look at his computers while I was looking around. Full of nothing but old books, his ramblings, and experimental code.”

“Yeah? What’s it say?”

“I have no idea, I’m not a programmer.”

“You’re an android.”

“And you’re a human, does that make you a neuroscientist?” she flashed him an unimpressed scowl. “It was just weird. And humans tap-tapping away on their little keyboards while binging on sci-fi and energy drinks is exactly how you ended up with an android revolution, you know.”

Gavin laughed at that, the sound quickly morphing into a pained grunt.

“Fuck, you know what? Maybe it’s the meds talking, but I’ll let you have that one,” he sighed after a moment. “Man. Humans are fucking dumbasses, huh?”

“You said it, not me.”

When he glanced her way, he noticed the trail end of a small smile. The first one he’d ever seen on her face.

(And shit. It was a long time since he was anyone’s reason to smile, especially an android’s. Sue a guy for finding some warmth in that.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Good morning, Detective.”

“Here’s your fucking cactus. Now do me a favor and don’t so much as breathe my way for a week.”

“Can I at least say thank you?”

“ _Starting now_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's up for some backstories? Next work in the series is 'Iris'.  
> (And yup, there's a sequel in the works. As with this one, I'll make sure it's done before uploading it, so everything is in relative state of completion.)
> 
> P.S. [For those interested, here's a link to my tumblr tag that's related to this story](http://cynicalbounce.tumblr.com/tagged/dbh-oc)


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